The excuse that was given was that these folks were fired for "performance" reasons. Does anyone here care to give an all inclusive definition of what "performance" means
I suppose I could look it up, but I'll wing it.
Everybody knows what a job is, no? You do work and get paid. You continue to do work and get paid if your company does well enough to support you and your performance warrants it.
To this end, nearly all companies give each and every employee a review of his performance each year, and out of this performance review, given by the employee's immediate supervisor, comes the basis for being retained and for any pay increases that ensue.
Now, if any boss wrote only on your performance that you should be let go because of "bad performance", there would probably be problems. That is because your performance is usually supported in writing on your review form.
Does anyone here who's an employee have a differing experience with performance reviews so far?
OK. Now it would appear that the fired US Attorneys have all had at least adequate performance, as defined by whatever their boss wrote down to support their being retained in the past.
Firing them for bad performance then begs the question of why they were REALLY fired, since it is unlikely that 8 out of 93 US Attorneys suddenly, at the same time, developed poor performance.
Performance is indeed defined. Performance is, again without my Funk & Wagnalls, the carrying out of your work; in this context, how well you carry out your work.
So performance is not this nebulous concept upon which we cannot get a handle. It is well-defined, though what constitutes performance certainly varies from business to business and one business relationship to another.
I don't pretend to know how it works in the government employee world, but in the private world firing me for poor performance without supporting documentation after years of retaining me with good performance as a reason to do so, and doing that firing on such a public level that it becomes published in the media would cause me a loss and would be defamatory. I do believe I would have standing and cause for a fat lawsuit.
So even though I do serve, in my job, at the pleasure of the owner and my boss, I'm not going to be fired because he doesn't like my tie.
Goslash: I am glad you asked that question so I didn't have to.