Terminated employee-then found out he was in hospital-HELP!!

Gayle

The wife of an employee in our plant called in on a Thursday and left a message that the employee was ill with pneumonia and would not be in that night and probably not the next night either. The following week we tried many times to contact the employee, leaving messages to contact us several times. We heard nothing. The following week we terminated him and sent paperwork saying he was terminated due to 3 consecutive days of no call, no show.
Today, his wife left a phone message looking for his paycheck and stated "he is till in the hospital". How would you handle this??? Are we obligated to reinstate him and call the time off FMLA??? He is a minority employee and I don't want to have a lawsuit over this....any help you can give would be appreciated!

LindaS

If I understand your post correctly, there was over a week that went by wherein you didn't hear anything from either the employee or a representative (ie, spouse) so you decided to follow your policy and terminate which is the same thing I would do. Unless either the employee or the spouse can prove that there were some extremely extenuating circumstances that explain the failure to contact the employer (or you don't have a policy in place regarding attendance) I don't see where they would have a defense to allow the employee back to work. His race shouldn't have anything to do with the reason for termination as long as you have followed your policies consistently in the past.

For some reason, employees (some) feel that FMLA grants them "carte blanche" to come and go as they please and that they don't have to follow company policies but that just isn't the case. Courts have sided with employers in the past for following their policies even if the absence is FMLA covered.

You may want to "dig" a little more to find out WHY nobody called but in absence of some pretty serious reason, follow your policy and terminate.

marc

I have a little different take on this. When you were notified by the wife of the pneumonia, idi you follow up with advising the ee of his FMLA rights? It seems to me that you had notice of a possible serious health condition that should have triggered the FMLA letter or the request for the Doctor to fill out the DOL form. You may be able to fire them for not following your policy, but I think you are inviting yourself for a swim in some hot water. The minority status should not be an impact on the situation, but the fact that it was brought up in your post makes me wonder if there are some other issues with this ee that might make you tread more carefully.

Don D

Your chronology states "the following week" twice, which makes me think he was in the hospital for two solid weeks or more with reported pneumonia. I would hold with the termination. If he can come up with something logical that helps you understand why or how he could not advise you for 7-14 days of his medical condition, I would re-evaluate. If he or his wife does produce evidence of his being hospitalized or still under medical care for this entire period of time, I would retract the termination letter and go with the standard FMLA. It's not worth getting into a p------ contest over this when he obviously had a medical condition that, had he dotted the i's, would have undeniably been FMLA.

Rockie

I'd ask for the medical verification and also an explanation as to why the company was not notified that the employee was in the hospital for such a lenghty stay. If the employee was truly in the hospital for pneumonia for this length of time, it was almost certainly life threatening. People are rarely in the hospital for this length of time this day and age unless it is very serious. I would guess that you are probably going to have to reinstate this employee.

Balloonman

Let the termination stand until you can get some verification that he was in the hospital, and why the wife never let you know. You can always undo a termination.
Let things play out, see what the facts are.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman