2010 Starting With A Bang!

My son called me yesterday and it seems his wife was terminated from her job in Phoenix where she held an airport clearance for eating on the job or more precisely, she was terminated for eating 15 minutes prior to a scheduled lunch break..........she is Hypoglycemic!

What confuses her so much is that the company she works for at the airport was so caring when she took a month off to come help me due to my surgery and my mom having cancer. They were supportive and even allowed her to come back!

She has never once been remanded for anything and her superiors have always praised the job she does, so she is very confused and upset that she was not only terminated, but the person that terminated her (someone she has never seen), would not tell her why she was terminated with the exception when they came into her work area, they saw her eating a snack and told her she needed to follow them because it wasn't break time.

My daughter-in-law has long had problems with eating and had to have stomach surgery when she was a child. Since then, she has to eat at regular intervals and when she begins to get shaky and dizzy, she needs to have some food pretty quickly.

That is what happened night before last. She was cleaning a bathroom, began to shake really bad and felt very dizzy, so she walked to a vending machine, grabbed a snack and returned to her work area and while working in a public restroom no less (can we say gross!), ate a small snack and it was during this time she was escorted away and terminated.

It never fails to amaze me at how poorly people are treated and worked like dogs and then terminated without any explanations just because Arizona is a right-to-work state. This time however, I believe she has a case against the company for the following reasons:

1- Her company has a policy of progressive discipline and she has never received as much as a lecture.

2- When she returned to work in December, she had to reapply with the company and they re-hired her. Her first night at work at the Phoenix airport, her security badge could not be located, so she was escorted out of the airport by security and told to 'take it up with the company.' No sooner had she returned home and picked her baby up from the sitter, they called her to tell her she could come back, they had just found her badge and her paycheck.

3-She has documented proof of her medical condition.

There are several other reasons and she is very upset as one can imagine as she was the only one working. The one bright thing in this is that several months ago, my son was collecting unemployment and his company failed to meet their deadline for an appeal. Of course, being a corporation, the state of Arizona allowed them to appeal several months past their deadline.

My son being Autistic filed an appeal and requested (as is his right under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the unemployment appeal process ) to have an arbitrator or someone else to help him during the court process. He was denied. He was given a telephone number to the University of Arizona's law department where he was promptly told they couldn't help him.

During the appeal, he informed the judge he needed assistance because he is Autistic. Not only did the judge refuse to give him extra time to find assistance, she flat refused to allow him to talk on his own behalf telling him nothing he had to say pertained to the case.

My daughter-in-law found out, my son can re-appeal the termination of his benefits and request another judge. I have given them a few avenues to follow-up on and pray they can get some assistance.

Why is it, corporations can break the rules and normal Joe's have to toe the line? My daughter-in-law is a hard worker. My son hates not having a job, but once you are terminated, it is very difficult to find a company that will trust you again.

I can only pray for them and hope they can get some help. At this time, it looks like they are going to have difficulty paying rent or anything else and I think, hubby and I can probably re-inflate the air mattress!

With 2010 being only 39 minutes old, I still believe it is going to be a great year, I just feel bad for my son and daughter-in-law who begin it with a big bang!