Apparently getting pregnant is grounds for firing in Eugene

Yes ... there's no crying in baseball, but you can bawl your eyes out in softball ...

 

I would bet that practically everyone in that situation does it, every day.

 

Others might know better than me, but don't most companies keep their emails, deleted or not? Or are they really gone once that delete button is pushed? The destruction of property argument seems pretty flimsy regardless. As others have said, are they going after anyone who has deleted an email while on leave?

Seems like they've been trying to get rid of her, right or wrong, for a while. I think they probably should have waited until she wasn't pregnant any more. Not really a ton less insensitive, but man are they trying to look like morons? I can't imagine this ends well for them on multiple levels. Seems like a great company to work for.

 

You guys can be snarky on this, but there does not seem to be much HR experience here.

The paper might be in the clear here, and potentially right. If she had already been put on a plan of improvement or had it suggested to her, fucking around with work email when she was told not to was not a smart career move.

 

I'm not in HR, but I've seen a few people go through similar situations while pregnant, and I'm pretty confident in saying this:

As soon as the R-G kicks this out to a lawyer who did not marry into the publisher's family, this will end with a settlement. The R-G will want no part of taking this to court.

 

I'm sure it will be settled, with both sides happy to put it in the past.

But I'll say this also, if this woman was already on a PIP and felt targeted, one of the stupidest things she could do is check her work e-mail while out on FMLA. If you're out on FMLA or any kind of similar leave, then you're out 100 percent.

 

She should still roll the dice with legal action. It may work, it may not. I spent 18 months battling my former employer, and although I ultimately didn't come out on top, it gave me great pleasure to know I was an enormous pain in their asses and cost them a lot of time and money on attorney fees.

 

An imposed PIP almost always signals the beginning of the end.

Whether there are legitimate reasons, or not (and there may or may not be) to get rid of someone, it means the company is now looking for them. And it will find them (or one), because no one is perfect.

That's what you need to be to get through a PIP period.

 

A management decision to switch you to an unrelated beat/different shift is also a sign.

 

IF she had been notifed in writing that checking the email was specifically a firing offense.

Now if she HAD been so notified and ALL other employees checking emails at home on days off/during off hours, have been subject to discipline, then it's a different deal. My strong suspicion is this is not the case.


Yah yah yah I know it's probably buried deep in the contract language, but if her legal people can show evidence that other staffers have routinely logged onto email while officially off the clock without penalty or reprimand, and she was not issued formal notice this practice was forbidden, I can't see it standing up.

 

But this isn't a day off or off hours. It's FMLA, with an entirely different set of rules that seem to be constantly evolving and being interpreted as we go.

I'm not saying the paper isn't run by assholes who deserve to pay this woman big-time. I hope she pursues this and cashes in with a ridiculous settlement. I'm just saying that as someone who was well aware she was being targeted by management, she didn't do herself any favors by doing one ounce of work-related stuff - including something as innocent as checking work e-mail from home.

 

We don't know what was in the PIP -- maybe one of the complaints against her was inadequate response to email contacts, or insufficient attention to keeping her email queue organized and cleaned out of junk mail (I have worked at places where people got written up for exactly that) and she could argue, completely sincerely, she was only logging on to prevent having to shovel through an unwieldy dogpile of crap when she returned to work.

In any case if she DID receive a specific notice that to do so was verboten, obviously she was silly/stupid to do it anyway.

But just from the other circumstances of the case, my bet is no such explicit instructions were given.

Of course, a day off (as in, your usual day off, let's say Sunday), a vacation day, a personal day, a sick day and a FMLA day are ALL slightly different in legal interpretation.

However, if in the past, staff members have been logging on to email on ANY of these days without reprimand or penalty, then UNLESS the paper issued her a very specific warning that logging onto email during FMLA tie was to be considered a firing offense, there is going to be a hell of an argument that "employees checked email all the time on days they were off the clock and nobody ever said a word."

One thing is sure now: they'll probably get a 50-page memo detailing every conceivable circumstance they could possibly log on from home and spelling out penalties.

Next-most-likely development: staffers will get a memo utterly and completely banning them from logging on to email from any location other than their office computer.