Wisconsin Worker Wins Federal Employment Discrimination Case

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/12515

Submitted by Doug Cunningham on December 8, 2009 - 4:31pm
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By Doug Cunningham

A Wisconsin heavy truck driver who won a federal employment discrimination lawsuit has a message for other workers who are illegally discriminated against.

: “I feel like you should not give up on it, because they are wrong. If they're wrong, pursue it to the max."

Marv Vike is President of AFSCME Local 1077 in Rock County, Wisconsin. He hurt his hand on the job and on July 5th, 2006 was suddenly told he was being immediately laid off. But Vike says the real reason he was being sacked was that his wife’s open heart surgery Family and Medical Leave Act time was up, meaning her insurance was ending. He expected to switch he and his wife to his health insurance.

: “Instead of switchin' her over to me they fired me, with hopes that my wife would just kick the bucket or whatever and they'd be rd of both of us."

Vike hasn’t yet seen a penny of his settlement but will ultimately get the check. He got his old job back and his wife is now covered under his health insurance.

[mojowork_n]

1. Go Figure

Thanks for posting. As a Wisconsinite helping a friend with a pending EEOC claim, it's nice to know that these things sometimes actually do have good outcomes. On the down side, though, there's something about the story that reminds me of an entry from last week's "News of the Weird" column:

http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw091129.html

Can't Possibly Be True

In April, Richard Huether, the manager of the HoneyBaked Ham outlet in Cary, N.C., was shot in the stomach during a robbery of the store and hospitalized, with medical bills paid through worker compensation and his employee health benefits. In September, when his worker compensation expired (and though still at least three months away from returning to work), HoneyBaked fired him (forcing him to begin paying 100 percent of his insurance premiums and making subsequent insurance prohibitively expensive because of his new "pre-existing condition"). However, HoneyBaked human resources executive Maggie DeCan told WRAL-TV that the firing was for Huether's own good, in that it would clear the way for him to receive Social Security disability payments. Said DeCan, "We couldn't feel any worse for Rich, and we would do anything we could for him (except keep him on the payroll)."

In this case, the "down side" (the 'Can't Possibly Be True' part) is that -- possibly, I'm just guessing -- this HoneyBaked Ham outlet is very likely just a single, isolated, franchise outlet. In other words, a bunch of mostly decent, no better/no worse -- no doubt hard-working -- local folks. They are probably, in their own way, as S.O.L. as the manager who got shot during the robbery.

The "invisible" element of the story is most likely the fact that the franchise arrangement in no way holds the parent company liable for trivial, local events like this. The parent corporation (for all legal intents and purposes, "a person") has all the name recognition/brand loyalty/marketing rights to the business plan (all the "good stuff"), but the agreement with the franchisees probably indemnifies them against isolated, far-away occurences like this (all the "bad stuff.")

So the bottom line is that whatever happens at any individual franchise outlet, the real "owners" of the business plan can't be held accountable.

.....Insurance companies that screen against "pre-existing conditions" are the other side of the Catch-22.

.....It's like the Fall of Rome/Dark Ages/Collapse of Civilization all over again, only this time the feudal barons who assume the responsibility for protecting the average person, are also at one and the same time, the Huns who are CAUSING the Collapse of that Civilization. As they cash in their "winnings" at some off-shore bank, Cayman Island or Bermuda or wherever, with a big 'F.U. very much, Sayonara Sucker, Good Bye.'