Is this legal?

hyperJulie
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:59:27 +0000

I’m not going to be surprised at all if it’s not, but I’m wondering if there is any legal recourse to what my father’s company is currently doing.

My dad works for a grocery chain as an assistant manager. Over the past month or so, they’ve begun to fire (read, fire, not let go) full time employees, many with 10+ years at the company. In each case, they’ve been citing incidents (some of very dubious merit) that occurred prior (but still on record) as cause for firing. For instance, one was supposedly fired for a “violent outburst” which consisted of throwing a couple of empty cardboard boxes, and supposedly striking a customer, which by the account of all coworkers, never happened.

So far the company has been successfully denying unemployment benefits to all of these individuals on the basis of these incidents on record, even though their firing was in no way contingent on their occurring. A couple have tried to fight it but ultimately lost and had to return any money collected.

I know there’s probably no recourse for this but it frustrates me that they’re firing qualified, dedicated workers from decent paying jobs. The store is making good money but they want to replace all of the full timers with part timers so they can pay them less and deny them benefits. My dad is the last full-time non-managerial employee outside of the meat department. They fired several of these employees the week before Christmas.

The two that were fired today, as I hear more about this, supposedly were fired because “the store was dirty,” and they were the maintenance crew. One of the men fired today had never been written up during his entire time there and they are being denied their earned vacation and unemployment just like the rest.

I’m sorry that this is disorganized, but I am currently writing this as I hear more and more about the situation, so I’m getting updates as I type. With all of these sudden firings at the same time, is there any way to help these people get their benefits, and to protect my father when the inevitable comes? My dad does have a couple incidents on his record (though nothing serious, just a couple instances of being late, and something bogus that was due to a previous manager trying to cover his own backside by throwing my dad under the bus).

At the very least, is there any sort of bad business watchdog or group that we can report this to? This is filthy wrong and dirty in my eyes. The owners of this company have a private island and they’re throwing dedicated employees to the curb for no real reason without wanting to give them a dime. :(