My company has offered two choices of severance packages. Should I advise an attorney on which to choose?

Question: for me, 29yrs of work will soon be ending due to the company moving jobs to Mexico. My company has offered 2 choices of severence packages to its employees. The standard one, without a signed release agreement, results in 22 weeks pay for me while the enhanced, with a signed release would result in 44 weeks pay. Do I need to seek advise from an attorney on this matter and if so what kind of questions do I need to be asking. Are there laws that help protect us when losing jobs to low cost countries?

Answer: Check with your HR people, your union (if you or others at your company have one) and the Employment Security Commission to see if an foreign trade impact petition was filed with the US Department of Labor to provide benefit and training assistance under the Trade Act or the related NAFTA Trade Act. If that has not been done maybe it should be, but you can't control that--you can only try to influence others to act.

You need to understand what you are giving up for the additional money. A labor law attorney can help you. First, get copies of the two documents if you can. Read them yourself. Get a family member or friend or resource to read them for you and highlight and summarize the differences. See if the differences are self evident and justify the pay difference. Or if some influence or effect or factor beyond the document difference is the reason. Here you have to be speculative and use conjure. Finally form some tenative opinions and take your documents, your summary, your highlights and tenative opinions to an experienced labor attorney who should be able to help you in less time because you did the ground work. The lawyer referral from the State Bar may be able to make a referral.