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Keep the Peace and Be of Good Behavior
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Last Login: 8/1/2008 6:07 PM
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| "or that she would promise to take a cut in pay if she was allowed to see her husband off..." Martin, Forgive me if you think me to be sharpshooting here, but wouldn't the above example fall under General Contract Law? Couldn't you call the employer saving salary and the woman taking time off an exchange of consideration? She is giving up the benefit of cash and the employer is giving up the employee's production value...Am I reaching here or do I have a leg (even a weak one) to stand on? All this legal talk is making me wish I had gotten back in time for the start of Law School!
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Keep the Peace and Be of Good Behavior
Group: Past PNET Supporter
Last Login: 8/1/2008 6:07 PM
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| "She said she had told her bosses that she would try to return on Oct. 17 but if she could not, she would definitely be back Oct. 18, she said. But on the afternoon of Oct. 17, she received a call from work telling her to come in the following day and get her things because she was being fired. Her pink slip said the reason was she failed to show up for work Oct. 17, a Monday, she said." Martin, With respect to potential litigation... When she told her bosses that she would be back possibly on the 17th and NLT the 18th...is there a cause of action there if her statement was acknowledged and not objected to by her bosses? Something akin to the Promisory Estoppel angle? Could acknowledgement coupled with failure to object be considered an acceptance given the dynamic of the employer/employee relationship? Would the record of how this situation has been handled in the past with others be applicable even though it is an at will state? Lets say that Jane Doe, another employee at the company takes a week off for a vacation, and she doesn't get home until really late the night before she is suppopsed to report for work. This being the case she calls and says that she will not be at work the next day though she is scheduled, and for whatever reason they didn't fire Jane Doe. The company at this point, would probably have to show some other causation for the termination, no? I'll have to look up the second one, and I recognize that it is shaky ground. The best case scenario for this woman is probably if we were talking about "John Doe" rather than "Jane Doe"...because that is at least a starting position for sex discrimination. Lets run this up the flagpole and see who salutes?!
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Hard Charger
 
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Maybe she is grandstanding to get her old man home early?
Considering the talk in press and radio seem to be about her employers action and that alone I doubt it. There's been nothing to even suggest her or her husband were anything other than accepting of his deployment, There have been no "Cindy" statements about illegal war or any other trash.
Fired military wife gets national hearing
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Ted Roelofs
The Grand Rapids Press
The phone has not stopped ringing since Wednesday afternoon.
"I never thought all this would have happened from such a little story," said Caledonia resident Suzette Boler, 40, fired from her receptionist job the day after her husband left for duty in New Jersey, then Iraq.
A story in Wednesday's Press prompted angry reactions from veterans and soldiers all the way to Iraq, in addition to offers of jobs and financial help from Florida to Ohio to Chicago. Boler was booked for an appearance on CNN today, on top of interviews with radio stations from Texas to Indianapolis.
Boler was fired Oct. 17 from Benefit Management Administrators Inc., a small independent Caledonia employee-benefits firm.
Her firing notice states she was dismissed for failing to report for work that Monday, the day after she said goodbye in Indianapolis to her husband, Army Spc. Jerry Boler.
Jerry Boler, 45, is training at Fort Dix for duty in Iraq. The 20-year National Guard veteran and diesel mechanic in civilian life expects to be assigned to protect convoys from insurgent attacks.
Boler, who worked three days a week, took three unpaid days off the week before his departure to spend time with her husband.
Boler maintains she was asked -- not told -- to be back to work Oct. 17, and that she planned to be there the next day. The company maintains she was told she "must be" at work that Monday.
Boler said she got a call about 4:30 p.m. that day and was told she was fired.
Company founder Henry Bledsoe declined comment about her firing for several days before the Press story was published Wednesday. But in the wake of the fallout, Bledsoe, 54, spoke Thursday and defended the company's actions.
"We bent over backwards for Suzie," Bledsoe said.
He said she had an obligation to phone in and say she would not be at work. But he said the firing was about more than missing one day at work. He maintained Boler compiled an erratic work record and spent company time surfing the Internet and composing personal letters. He said in a television interview that she clicked on 6,000 Internet sites in a week.
Asked why none of that was mentioned in her termination notice, Bledsoe said: "We chose not to list all those things because that's history."
Boler denied Bledsoe's assertions about her work record and said she wasn't even skilled at using the Internet.
"That almost impossible," she said about his claim of excessive Internet use. "That's four sites a minute if I did nothing else.
"He knows my job performance. Trashing me, I thought, was beneath him."
Bledsoe said he comes from a family where military service and support of troops is a tradition. He noted that he served in the Air Force from 1970 to 1974, including hospital duty in Thailand.
"We are staunch American supporters," Bledsoe said.
Jerry Boler, who is training at Fort Dix, N.J., prior to leaving for Iraq, said this about her firing: "I didn't think it was very patriotic. I guess people have to deal with their own conscience."
John Buncak, 65, a retired Army major who was injured in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, learned of Boler's firing on an Internet news site. The Ohio resident said he tried in vain to get through the jammed switchboard at the company Thursday morning to vent his anger.
"It's ridiculous. It's unconscionable. I'm just upset. I want to express my displeasure with their management practice," Buncak said.
Tom Joseph, president of an Akron, Ohio, software firm, phoned Boler Thursday and offered to pay her lost wages until she finds another job. Boler earned $9 an hour, working three days a week in a job she had about 14 months.
"We've got to support our troops," Joseph said. "We have got to step and do everything we can."
Sitting in her living room as she spoke to Joseph, Boler said: "I'm a little overwhelmed here."
Given her tight finances, Boler said she thought might accept the offer.
"But only for a little while," she said. - GRP
Robert Weiss, Manager of Veteran Affairs is expected to talk with congressional leaders next week about adding spouses to the USSERA act.
"When soldiers leave for duty their jobs are protected by the USSERA act. The act helps troops to retain their jobs when they return, but spouses who take a day off to say goodbye are not protected, which is why Weiss says the act needs to be changed.
Robert Weiss: "They have to have 5 days off when their spouse is deployed and 5 days off when they return home." "
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Regular Joe
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He said she had an obligation to phone in and say she would not be at work. But he said the firing was about more than missing one day at work. He maintained Boler compiled an erratic work record and spent company time surfing the Internet and composing personal letters. He said in a television interview that she clicked on 6,000 Internet sites in a week.
Asked why none of that was mentioned in her termination notice, Bledsoe said: "We chose not to list all those things because that's history." This guy is digging his hole deeper and deeper. He sounds like a real jerk! To make a comment like he did about how those things are history was just sheer stupidity! If it was history, then it was NOT the reason you chose to terminate her...if it WAS the reason you chose to terminate her, then it should have been listed. I am tending to believe her because of how really stupid this guy sounds. I know there are two sides to every story, but PLEASE!!! She only worked three days a week, for Gawd's sake! And at $9 an hour? And she worked there for 14 months??? And you never fired her before this? He is like a lot of politicians out there that are losing the race, so they start trashing the other...it is childish, unprofessional and idiotic. If he hadn't ranted like a lunatic, made exxaggerated claims of how many Internet sites she was cruising, etc. etc. etc.....he might have won public support. But he was stupid in his timing, stupid in his responses...and he has got what's coming to him.
ProudNiece In honor of Pvt. Harry E. Sears, 194th GIR, Co. B, 17th AB WW2 Purple Heart Recipient CIB And of my son, Jazz Edwin Sears (March 5, 1996 - Dec. 19, 2006) 
who was all that a trooper should be... 
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Hard Charger
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VoTrooper99 (10/29/2005)
"or that she would promise to take a cut in pay if she was allowed to see her husband off..."Martin, Forgive me if you think me to be sharpshooting here, but wouldn't the above example fall under General Contract Law? Couldn't you call the employer saving salary and the woman taking time off an exchange of consideration? She is giving up the benefit of cash and the employer is giving up the employee's production value...Am I reaching here or do I have a leg (even a weak one) to stand on? All this legal talk is making me wish I had gotten back in time for the start of Law School! Contract law wouldn't apply because they didn't negotiate it ahead of time. In order to form a contract you have to have the agreement of all parties beforehand: Offer, Acceptance, Consideration. In this case, even if the woman "offered" something in exchange for the day off, there's no indication that her employer ever accepted. And besides, she was an employee, she had a pre-existing duty to show up for work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and a pre-existing duty can never be a basis for consideration (that's why a policeman, for example, cannot receive a reward for returning a stolen item.) Make sense?
Martin  "When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission" - Zapp Branigan, Futurama
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Hard Charger
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VoTrooper99 (10/29/2005)
"She said she had told her bosses that she would try to return on Oct. 17 but if she could not, she would definitely be back Oct. 18, she said.But on the afternoon of Oct. 17, she received a call from work telling her to come in the following day and get her things because she was being fired. Her pink slip said the reason was she failed to show up for work Oct. 17, a Monday, she said." Martin, With respect to potential litigation... When she told her bosses that she would be back possibly on the 17th and NLT the 18th...is there a cause of action there if her statement was acknowledged and not objected to by her bosses? Something akin to the Promisory Estoppel angle? Could acknowledgement coupled with failure to object be considered an acceptance given the dynamic of the employer/employee relationship? Well, I'm not an expert in employment law, but I don't see how this would help her. It could not be promissory estoppel because that is asserted by the promisee (the person to whom the promise was made) not the promisor (the person making the promise.) No promise was made by the company, therefore no promissory estoppel. Would the record of how this situation has been handled in the past with others be applicable even though it is an at will state? Lets say that Jane Doe, another employee at the company takes a week off for a vacation, and she doesn't get home until really late the night before she is suppopsed to report for work. This being the case she calls and says that she will not be at work the next day though she is scheduled, and for whatever reason they didn't fire Jane Doe. The company at this point, would probably have to show some other causation for the termination, no? Under those circumstances, yes, she might have a wrongful termination claim. It would depend on a number of factors, including whether or not her employment was covered by any kind of "rulebook" or "employee manual." There have been cases, for example, where an employee handbook stated that there was a procedure for termination (i.e., first a verbal warning, then a written warning, then a suspension and finally termination) and some courts have ruled that this could transform the relationship from an at-will relationship to a contract relationship, IOW, if there is an employee handbook, the company might be held to the standards of the handbook. Furthermore, if she can construe that her termination was based on some factor other than performance (for example, another secretary in the same situation also missed work and was not fired, but she was also dating the boss) then she might have grounds for some kind of title VII civil rights suit against the employer. I'll have to look up the second one, and I recognize that it is shaky ground. The best case scenario for this woman is probably if we were talking about "John Doe" rather than "Jane Doe"...because that is at least a starting position for sex discrimination. Not neccessarily! If the other "Jane Doe" wasn't fired for missing work because she also happened to be sleeping with the boss, then the woman in this case would have a great cause of action for sexual harassment, essentially saying that the company allows people who are sexually involved with management to break the rules while she can't. The unstated implication is that there would, in that case, be pressure for her to be sexually involved with the managers.
Martin "When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission" - Zapp Branigan, Futurama
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Hard Charger
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ProudNiece (10/29/2005)
This guy is digging his hole deeper and deeper. He sounds like a real jerk! To make a comment like he did about how those things are history was just sheer stupidity! If it was history, then it was NOT the reason you chose to terminate her...if it WAS the reason you chose to terminate her, then it should have been listed. I am tending to believe her because of how really stupid this guy sounds. I know there are two sides to every story, but PLEASE!!! She only worked three days a week, for Gawd's sake! And at $9 an | | | |