Apparently getting pregnant is grounds for firing in Eugene

May just be semantics at this point, but the legal differences between a day off and FMLA regulations are far more than "slightly" different.

And in the end, it isn't really relevant in the least what she was told in her PIP, or what her or others have been told as it pertains to checking or not checking their work e-mail, or any specific reprimands or penalties her or others have been given or not given for similar actions in the past. FMLA supercedes ALL of that. And she's been around the block long enough to know that.

In fact, if she can produce evidence that this employer expected her to live up to whatever may have been written in the PIP (or what the company's policies and past views on work e-mail have been), while ignoring the protections guaranteed by FMLA, she would probably have a much better case and be looking at a bigger settlement in the end.

 

Has anyone asked yet how a person can "apparently get pregnant"? Maybe she's just fat.

 

What all her former co-workers should do is start deleting forwarded e-mails.
See if they fire everyone who does it or not.

 

What a complete mess by what is regarded as a pretty good paper and a pretty good place to work.

She may have been told two different, competing things in don't work while on FMLA but stay on top of your beat.

Terminating a pregnant woman while on medical leave is some shitty business. I have to think there's vastly more to the story that hasn't been reported.

 

It shouldn't be a fireable offence -- I will agree with that.

But it can be a big deal if an employee is doing anything work related while on short term disability. Most of the time when it comes to short term disability, the company isn't paying the worker during that time, the insurance company is. A company buys a short term disability policy and when it needs to be used, the insurance company pays the employee based on the policy.

If a worker is doing working on short term disability and the insurance company finds out, that is a BIG problem and can be grounds for terminating the contract. We had a guy on staff who was on short term disability and was still checking/responding to email and occassionally would go cover a game without telling us (randomly an email would show up with a prep basketball game attached). He was a nice guy who felt bad that he couldn't help out a small, overloaded staff.

We had to tell him to immediately stop doing that because it would be a major problem for the insurance company. They don't want to pay your workers to do work for you. We didn't fire him but we did have to warn him that if he did it again he would be fired. The company can't be put at risk of losing its insurance coverage no matter how noble the reasons.

 

I do agree with Starman, that it will probably come down to whether the company had a written policy regarding what can and cannot be done while on leave. If the company did, they probably are justified in dismissing her. If not, it's more of a gray area.

I have no knowledge of the person involved in this particular incident, but I have seen incidents where companies are sort of looking for any reason to terminate someone.

 

There's really not much debate that if she was specifically told not to do it and did it anyway, she's probably sunk.

And considering the paper was already acting like they wanted to get rid of her, it was certainly incumbent upon her to fully read any memos she was issued regarding the requirements of FMLA.

But the impression I get is there were not a lot of detailed instructions issued regarding this subject, which could have been a fumble on the part of the Guild, too.

If management was already showing signs of trying to get rid of her, the Guild should have said, 'we want detailed instructions on how you intend to administer the FMLA time to make sure there are no inadvertent violations.'

 

If the company had no policy on it --- preferably written --- then they might have some liability.

I got caught up in an incident many years where someone tried to vilify something I did off the clock. There was no written company policy against it and no one had ever said not to do it and I had witnessed plenty of other people at other shops do the same thing, so the idea that had violated some sort of policy never crossed my mind. They suspended me for a week and, in hindsight, I wished I had just resigned on the spot rather than endure such an unpleasant atmosphere every day for another six months.

Bottom line: you can't make up rules after the fact.

 

That's the point -- if Nugent and/or the Guild can show that employees had previously logged into emails on off days, or especially, while "out sick," without penalty, they have a very strong argument unless a specific warning not to do it while on FMLA leave.

Since many, if not most, if not all, newspapers these days are drastically understaffed, any fulltimer calling in sick has to be aware of the likelihood during the day(s) they are out, important emails will probably not get answered (nobody else is going to do it) and they will probably face some kind of brush fire when they get back to work if they just let it slide.


I know more than once in such a situation I may have decided I was too sick to drive in a half-hour, put in 8 hours, then drive back, so I called in sick for my work shift, but knowing I had certain important emails coming in that needed to be addressed, I took care of it from home. Took me maybe 5 minutes tops. Even if I was coughing wheezing and sneezing.

And I didn't get fired or bitched out or anything. I didn't get any gold star for it either, but when I told the editor, 'I checked my email from home because I figured nobody on the desk here would have time to do it,' he said, 'you called that one right.'

Of course that could just indicate that somebody in the managerial food chain (or the Guild) was screwing up/slacking off by allowing what should have been specifically forbidden by a memo.

But 'common practice' was that if you elected to log on to work email on an off day (by whatever definition) to save yourself a pain-in-the-ass email pileup when you got back to work, it was your own decision.

I know no manager ever told me I HAD to do it, and nobody ever told me I SHOULDN'T do it. I know a couple times at the bar over beers some people might have said, 'ahhh, I never check emails or do ANY kind of work on my off days,' but nobody seemed to think I (or anybody else) was establishing any dangerous precedent by doing so.

 

Have you ever been on FMLA? I had emergency surgery a year or so back and had to file the paperwork in case I was out beyond the sick time I had remaining. I didn't end up going on it and was back before my sick time was up, but I filed it online, and received instantly about 2 full pages from the insurance company, going over in excruciating detail what this meant and what I was and was not allowed to do. About 2 days later, I got the same notice through regular mail.

I also got a call from our HR director, spelling out the same information and how I was not to work until I was cleared by my doctor, off FMLA, etc. I'd bet a good amount of money this woman didn't get similar help from the HR director who was targeting her for firing.

Anyway, my point is that there's no gray area about who's calling the shots when you're on FMLA. Like I said before, anything done at the employer's level, from PIP, what is or is not allowed or has or has not been done by other people when they are off, on sick time, off hours, from home, whatever, is completely irrelevant. It all is trumped by the FMLA rules and protections.

If her defense is, "Bobby Beatwriter once checked his e-mail when he was off one day and he didn't get in trouble!", then she needs to get a different lawyer.

 

IF she got all that paperwork, all those memos, all those notices, etc etc etc -- then she's sunk.

IF.

And it certainly could be a fertile area of investigation to inquire if perhaps there might be any reason an HR director or other management flunky might have "neglected" to do so.

 

Didn't she already take an extended leave to get married?