W/C light duty - Can we lay off?
dwitt
26 Posts
Hi everyone,
It's been several months since my last posting to the forum, although I've gone in on occasion to read all of your entries and great advice.
Background: I have 3 plants in the U.S. - 2 in Illinois(total 160 employees), and 1 in North Carolina(total of 33 employees). My NC plant also has 5 temporary employees (employed by a staffing agency). Temporary employees begin work at my company under the assumption that with good work performance they will be hired by my Company after 60 working days. My understanding of FMLA, my NC plant does not meet the minimum of 50 employees for FML purposes.
We have a NC employee (hired for factory/production type work) who was injured while at work over a year ago. He was off on W/C leave for approx. 10 months. While on leave, he also had surgery related to this injury. He returned to work in August, 2005 and has been working light-duty in production on 2nd shift. My Operations Mgr wants to eliminate 2nd shift due to a slowdown in production volume. He wants to lay off this employee with restrictions along with 1 other temporary worker. He does not want to let the 4 1st shift temporary workers go because they are good workers and he intends to hire them under our payroll once they have fulfilled their contract with the temp agency.
This injured employee on light-duty is also scheduled for a 2nd surgery next week with no return to work date or expectation of what his restrictions will be.
Are we setting ourselves up for a W/C retaliation case if we lay off this employee?
It's been several months since my last posting to the forum, although I've gone in on occasion to read all of your entries and great advice.
Background: I have 3 plants in the U.S. - 2 in Illinois(total 160 employees), and 1 in North Carolina(total of 33 employees). My NC plant also has 5 temporary employees (employed by a staffing agency). Temporary employees begin work at my company under the assumption that with good work performance they will be hired by my Company after 60 working days. My understanding of FMLA, my NC plant does not meet the minimum of 50 employees for FML purposes.
We have a NC employee (hired for factory/production type work) who was injured while at work over a year ago. He was off on W/C leave for approx. 10 months. While on leave, he also had surgery related to this injury. He returned to work in August, 2005 and has been working light-duty in production on 2nd shift. My Operations Mgr wants to eliminate 2nd shift due to a slowdown in production volume. He wants to lay off this employee with restrictions along with 1 other temporary worker. He does not want to let the 4 1st shift temporary workers go because they are good workers and he intends to hire them under our payroll once they have fulfilled their contract with the temp agency.
This injured employee on light-duty is also scheduled for a 2nd surgery next week with no return to work date or expectation of what his restrictions will be.
Are we setting ourselves up for a W/C retaliation case if we lay off this employee?
Comments
Thins to consider, are you going to consider senority when making the decision. Do all temos start on night shift and move to day shift by LOS? If you are using length of service, did you hire any of the other 4 temos while this temp was out on W/C leave? If looking at performance, where does this ee rate with the others? Are you losing an regular ees that work night shift? If so, I would think you have a better argument to keep those and let more of the temps go. That way you are using employment status (temp v. regular) as a motivating factor. There are many different scenerios to play through your head, I would recommend whenever you start an RIF, get your labor attorney involved.