A friend of mine in Kyiv, a software engineer, was recently let go by his small-ish, US-based company fairly suddenly, with no forewarning (just cut off his access to company tools). Upon further inquiry, they seemed to site some BS “performance issues”. There was no termination agreement signed, no severance.

He works for the company directly; they have an HR office in Ukraine that handles Ukrainian personnel questions. They owe him $9-10k in wages. An HR rep in Ukraine keeps saying she wired him the money, but won’t give him any proof of remittance (she’s stalling on it from what I can tell from his description of their interaction). A friend of his at the company said that this HR rep recently asked everyone in a meeting if everyone got their wages that period, and everyone said they did, so it would be strange if only his were missing.

I know from past experience that an incorrectly filed international wire from the US can take a few weeks sometimes to fix. But if it’s something more nefarious, he’s wondering what legal recourse he can take as someone stuck in Ukraine?

He thinks he could maybe threaten them with legal action, but what would be a credible threat? Could he say that I could make a court filing on his behalf? Would he need to hire a lawyer to do that or even just to send them a letter demanding payment (and would it cost more than he’s owed)? Does he have any protection under US labor law?