I enjoy arguing in favor of unpopular positions.
I would say that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I am impressed with how idiotic people like Frank have been acting. I’ve lost count of the number of people in this thread have felt the need to attack a strawman rather than respond to the actual position I have taken.
Without revealing anything you consider private, how many situations like this one have you personally seen?
I would think you’d argue positions in which you believe. Arguing a position simply because it’s unpopular, that’s kinda like, trolling…no?
Well, I don’t deny it. But many employers have official policies only for window dressing, when their actual behavior is quite different. Not long ago, I watched a video of a lawyer conducting a seminar that taught employers how to avoid hiring American citizens, so they could lie to the government about the necessity of hiring much cheaper immigrants. I’ll bet every one of those employers had an official policy against discrimination on the basis of national origin.
Inasmuch as Zale’s has not yet explained why she was dismissed, the whole affair stinks to the heavens.
It’s a debating technique called doubt casting, i.e. trying to make an opponent’s facts look doubtful or uncertain without producing any substantial reason for doubting them.
Heh, I’ve seen in a professional capacity very moving stories that turned out, on investigation, to be not what they appeared at first.
The example I’m thinking about is a case I was involved in many years ago as an articling student. The client was a lady who had taken mat leave (much more generous here in Canada than in the US) and was fired the day she came back - she had been with the company many years and was by all written accounts a stellar employee. Her claim was that her employer fired her because her mat leave was disrupting the business and the employer learned she planned on having further children, and so would prefer to have an employee who male or past having children - firing for this reason is not legal under Ontario law.
The timing of the firing (“welcome back - you’re fired”) certainly looked bad. She seemed to have an excellent case. The employer made some sort of lame argument in their Statement of Defence that the firing was for “cause” - unspecified misconduct - which just looked, without details, like insult heaped on injury.
It was the day before cross-examinations were to begin, the client dropped the bombshell - she was very nervous about being examined. Finally she confessed to her lawyers that she had, in fact, been skimming small amounts money from the business for years (she was their accountant), but was sufficiently clever at doing so that the boss had no proof - but when she went on mat leave, the replacement guy had gotten suspicious and the boss had believed him, even though the proof wasn’t really forthcomming … problem for the lawyer I was working for was what to do with the case? Can’t counsel perjury. He basically was forced to suddenly settle the case.
It was a big blow to me at the time, having worked on the case and finding the lady’s plight very sympathetic and the corporation unfeelingly callous - but it certainly taught me the lesson: never trust to first appearences. There may be more to the story.
Malthus makes a good point; frankly, so does brazil84. Zale’s may be completely in the wrong here, but there also may be other circumstances we don’t know yet. I know of a couple of instances where an employee was fired that seemed completely arbitrary and wrong.
In one case, the seemingly stellar ex-employee spent weeks badmouthing the company to anyone who would listen, including a media outlet. The company, on the advice of counsel, said absolutely nothing until the case was brought before a third party for adjutication. The opening statement by the company’s lawyer consisted of him showing footage from several weeks’ worth of security tapes. The model employee was seen clocking in and then immediately leaving the building. He’d return two or three hours later, work for a while, then leave again. He’d come back at the end of his shift to officially clock out.
He lost his case.
Let’s see your’s:
:dubious:
Sauron and Malthus, that may be, but so far, we have no evidence of such. And Zales has not provided any, nor have they even commented.
Yeah, I know, but that’s kinda my point. Large companies tend to have teams of lawyers that will tell them to say absolutely nothing publicly in the early stages. Sometimes that’s because the company screwed up, and they want to keep the damage as minimal as possible. Sometimes, though, it’s because there’s no reason for them to say anything. They know they’ll be proven right.
I’m not sure what your point is. I’ve seen many situations similar to the one described here.
At the same time, I recognize that it’s completely reasonable for you to be skeptical of claims made by a stranger which you see on the internet. I suggest that you should apply the same natural skepticism to the claims of this woman.
He kinda has a point there.
It is OK to be suspicions but here is a question, that if you guys think about it, shows where many on the thread are coming from and the point that I think you are ignoring:
Did the persons in the cases you described alert the media about their plight and did the media investigated and pointed to others that confirmed what was going on?
Incidentally the main point I’m coming from is how the company dealt with her health care rights, the issue of why she was fired is not clear.
That’s true, but it’s hard to imagine how an employer could conceal a violation of a policy against specific public comments. After all, a public comment is necessarily public.
There’s no question that companies discriminate and retaliate left and right. But there are also a lot of frivolous discrimination and retaliation complaints.
This is absolutely true. The majority of litigated workers’ compensation claims are filed by people who’ve been terminated for cause and want to get back at their employers.
Of course, do not trust him. I explained why in this case (so far) I trust more the saleslady in this case than Brasil84.
Well, yes …
Some people refuse to believe they’re in the wrong, regardless of what they’ve done, and they will self-righteously proclaim their innocence to all and sundry. Some media outlets will run with a story before confirming all details – or will go with one side of the story, with the caveat “The company refused to comment.”
In this (Zale’s) case, if I’m remembering it properly, the media has confirmed the woman was a top salesperson, and that she got surgery, and she was fired. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the story. It may be – Zale’s may be completely in the wrong here. Or it may be that she was skimming, or giving unauthorized discounts to friends and family members, or she outright stole merchandise from the company. The point is, we don’t have all the data necessary to formulate an informed opinion.
I have absolutely no faith on corporations. For a while I did some work for a major retailer and was bothered by the data in one of the reports, it seemed that I was missing something. The numbers for unemployment claims against the company and the number of denied/under review unemployment claims were identical. I checked with the resident DBA who informed me that this major retailer’s policy was to initially deny all unemployment claims, regardless of merit.
The end result of this policy was that, since unemployment can only be paid while the claimant is unemployed, a significant number of unemployment claims were never paid, since by the time the review was completed many claimants had already found other work.
I can’t say if this illegal, but it certainly was disgusting.
That could be a logical position to take, depending on your view of b84. However, when it really comes down to it, we don’t have enough information to condemn Zales right now. Sympathise with the employee, if you wish; her situation is obviously unfortunate regardless of whether her employer is screwing her.
However, as Sauron rightly notes above, we don’t know anything about Zales’ side of the story yet. If this woman was violating company policy, stealing, or whatever, they would be totally justified in firing her. We only have her representation of what she was told at her termination.
That’s not an unusual policy with large employers. However, in most states, an employer has to document that the employee was terminated for cause (or was otherwise not entitled to unemployment) in order to deny an unemployment claim. They can’t just issue blanket denials.
The issue here is that in your case you did not mention if the media that was alerted did confirm the the main points of the case or pointed to others that could confirm what was going on.
What you are missing is that there are 2 issues, her firing and how she was treated regarding her health care needs, one issue is not clear. The other has not only the confirmation of the reporter but also, on context, the confirmation of the New York claims investigator.
Cite? I used to work for a worker’s compensation law firm, and I saw quite a number of cases in which injured workers were still working for the employers.