Resignation or Termination?

A middle-aged woman head of a company division sat by an empty table, stacks of blouses piled up in front of her, waiting to be claimed by disgruntled customers. Her employer and staff blamed her for the delay and for not disclosing secret deals she made with the supplier without the knowledge of the company. How can she refute the charges,  with overwhelming evidence of her supposed fraudulent action for more than five years, which caused the company huge losses? She knew she faced the inevitable verdict: termination, to be fired.

Freda felt cold and almost lifeless. But she admitted to the crime. Yet, she trembled at the thought of facing her family and friends with guilt and shame for her actions. She felt the sting and anguish of giving in to her poor judgment. She fell prey to the temptation of quick money.  She now felt self-conscious and distressed about the possible negative outcome. Stigma and isolation. When this happens, this feeling of guilt and shame can lead to anxiety and depression. What would happen to her young children and her personal life. If terminated, how can she find another job without being asked why was she fired in the first place?

During the Pandemic, the phenomenon of the Great Resignation registered record numbers of people who left their jobs after the COVID-19 Pandemic. But this is no longer a period of extraordinary circumstances like the Pandemic or a war. It is back to normal, which requires the regular application of laws and disciplinary action. I began to feel pity for the lowly employee. Can she just be forgiven and let everything just be forgotten? For a terrible crime wholesale theft, forgiving was undoubtedly not an option. The other is resignation, my lawyer friend suggested.

The burden of resignation or termination

Resignation is when an employee or an official voluntarily leaves his job, or what we usually call it, the employee quits a job. With a termination, the company of the establishment does the firing. The company fires him for misconduct or poor job performance, in the business’s best interests, or being fired “for cause,” so the term has a negative connotation.  When the employee is fired for cause, the employee cannot claim unemployment benefits. The difference between resignation and termination can be a burden, especially when applying for another job. My friend recalled allowing another erring employee to resign to help save face for humanitarian reasons. But this time, he felt terminating a department head for deliberately and repeatedly violating rules of discipline and causing great harm to the company was the last stroke; it was a form of justice for the company and the affected workforce.  He agreed that employers can dismiss an employee based on just and authorized causes attributable to an employee’s own wrongful actions or negligence. My friend, an advocate for human rights and social causes, did just that. He opted to terminate.

Those familiar with significant business resignations will remember top billionaires resigning as CEOs from McDonald’s, Twitter, and CNN  because of high-profile sex scandals, bitter rivalries, and financial mismanagements. In the case of erring public officials, it’s the same, or it’s people power that boots them out, and the rest is history. It happened in 1986 when former president Ferdinand E. Marcos held on to power outside constitutional limits. He declared martial law and went down in history as a dictator forced to yield in the face of insurgency and people power.

I am sorry

Can apologizing make a difference? I recall in January 2021 when key members of the 14th president’s cabinet, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, resigned. The Hello Garci scandal, also known as Gloriagate, after the infamous Watergate Scandal, when former U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned 50 years ago on August 8. It was one of the greatest political conspiracies in U.S. history.

The Hello Garci scandal was a significant electoral crisis in the Philippines involving GMA, who allegedly rigged the 2004 national election where she and her vice president Noli de Castro won the presidency and vice presidency, respectively. Audio recordings of a phone call between GMA and a Comelec commissioner, Virgilio Garcillano, aired publicly about the rigging of the 2004 national election results. During the intense public clamor for her to resign, many, including her close party mates, convinced her to apologize and do the now famous I AM SORRY broadcast.  Impeachment did not work. GMA did not resign. Another former president, Erap Estrada who also faced mounting calls for resignation and people power actions in the streets because of his high-profile involvement in gambling and corruption. He was forced to resign, not voluntarily, in 2020.

Yesterday, the former UP president and distinguished financial expert, Alfredo E. Pascual, appointed Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry in 2022, resigned. He chose to return to his private life and private sector in finance. Earlier, Vice President Sara Duterte resigned for another reason. She announced her “irrevocable resignation” as Secretary of the Department of Education and from the country’s ruling party, the Lakas-CMD, because of what called “political toxicity,”  showing how highly fragmented and weak is the country’s political party system where alliances are in constant disarray. Much earlier, the notorious Alice Guo, town mayor in the great POGO scandal, is now in disgrace.

Resignation or termination? It’s about one’s power of leverage.