Woman Fired for Working During Lunch ' Illinois Labor Laws '

she obviously was at some point

 

Yes - but that's not what she was fired for. She was fired for not taking her lunch break on a day that she wasn't eating.

There are tens of thousands of receptionists in at-will employment states. I'm sure there are many times when people just choose not to eat lunch for a day here and there. Most companies have the common sense not to fire someone - especially someone that worked for you for 10 years - because they decided not to eat lunch one day. This company is either stupid or was looking for a reason to fire her to get out of being liable for unemployment benefits.

 

This is clearly Obama's fault.

 

I agree with you and I wasn't by any means defending the lame excuse-just citing something the employee could 'claim' as rationale but sounds like they might have been out to get her. You just don't do that to people unless you have some kind of vendetta against them.

 

If the company knowingly lets her work through her lunch they could be in violation of labor laws of the state, and could also be obligated to pay her for the time. It could become a liability issue for the company.

An occasional plugging away at the computer might be overlooked, but answering the phone and greeting customers should not. The company definitely overreacted if this was a one time thing -- but if she regularly worked through lunch HR needed to address it. There should have been several written notices in her employee file advising her of the company policy before the firing though.

 

And....

This is one reason why I'm starting grad school to study HR Management and preparing for the PHR!

Oddly, I LOVE the ambiguity of this field.

 

This is most likely the root. If she works during her break even if she does clock out, the company would be required to pay her. The policy is in place to protect the employer not necessarily the employee.

That being said the company handled this in a very poor fashion, IMO. Of course we don't know how much of pain in the a$$ this lady was either. I'll go on a limb and say she may have had issues otherwise they would've worked it out.

 

When I worked for Target they had a lucnh rule like that. A couple of times I clocked out but continue to work because we were very busy, and my managers either never noticed or did not care. However, they had an insane 40-hour work week restriction. No more than 40 hours in one week. Period.

Liability is a big issue, but this woman works at a desk; not a construction site, operating heavy machinery or handling dangerous materials.

This must be why the guy at my office building is always b****ing about Illinois.

 

I'm going to say both sides were dumb in their handling of this. Her manager told her to leave her desk and she refused. HR told her to leave her desk and she refused. I'd fire her to.

Another aspect of this that isn't being considered from the employer POV is, whether she is voluntarily not complying with the rule or not, what would stop her from filing a dispute at a later date saying her company had either forced her or subtly told her that she was expected to work despite not being on the clock? She'd have witnesses who would say she was at her desk on her lunch break.

I see people say the company obviously wanted to fire her for something and used this as an excuse, but I'm thinking maybe she wanted to get fired and used this. I mean seriously, what hourly employee flat out refuses to leave their desk when they are told by both their direct supervisor and by the corporate HR rep?

 

It's actually quite simple and bnb hit it spot on. If the company knowingly let her work during her break, than they may be obligated by law to pay her for that time. Whether she was "Clocked-In" or not.

This according to FLSA which is Federal and not state-specific.

 

I think the fact that she worked there for 10 years should make the company trust her just a little bit, in this regard. It's not like she was some random temp receptionist that they didn't know.

Assuming they weren't already trying to find a way to get rid of her, then if being sued was really a concern, a simpler solution would have been to ask her to sign a document stating she was voluntarily staying at her desk on her lunch break, etc.

 

Do you manage people? If you do, can you imagine giving one of your employees a specific direction and have them flatly refuse? You then ask HR to step in and they also refuse to obey the direct order of HR?

She made the statement "I was under the impression that because I was punched out and I could do what I want." That was in regards to what she had the right to do at her desk off the clock. That is still company property. She sounds like she had an attitude problem with management to be quite honest about it.

Refusing her supervisor's directions. Refusing to comply with Human Resources direction. Stating she could do whatever she wanted at her desk if she wasn't clocked in.

I'd want her fired too. But, I do agree that she should be able to get unemployment.

 

What's bizarre to me is that if she were at a higher level, with her own office, she could have stayed at her desk and worked, no questions asked. She could have stayed at her desk, worked, and had her lunch at the same time, door closed. No one would care. This is an example of an anal retentive manager feeling his oats and unloading on a productive employee, perhaps because he's simply having a bad day, one unconnected with this woman entirely. I know numerous salaried professionals who work through lunch all the time, snatching something to eat when they can, and not getting paid one extra dime for the effort. This is simply stupid, and no one will convince me otherwise. It is also an example of why workers should have more power at the workplace than they have in "at will" states. The rules are skewed towards management to a rediculous extent in those states. It's going from one extreme to another. Unsurprisingly, extremism being so in vogue now.

 

Salaried vs hourly Deck. This is actually an employee protection thing. Straying from the specifics of the particular case, it protects the employee from having to assert his/her rights to a proper break or being paid for hours worked. Otherwise Co could just ask her (or expect her) to eat at her desk and continue to answer phones etc.

I think one of the numerous suits against Walmart was for this very thing. That there was an implicit expectation for certain staff to work beyond their clocked hours.

I guy I know got nailed on this thing. An employee made a back claim for hours worked beyond his 'standard' hours. Since the employer knew he was working those hours (or should have known), the tribunal found in the employees favor --even though the hours were never 'authorized' and from my friends point of view, he was probably just catching up on stuff he should have done in his regular hours. The tribunals view was he was entitled to be paid for hours worked, and if there was an issue with slacking off on standard hours, or being too slow, that was a separate matter.

 

Deck, I think you are dead wrong here. This law is in there to protect the employee. If it didn't exist and you had to ask for a lunch break at work, how many companies do you think would pressure employees to clock out but continue working through lunch to complete their tasks? The whole point of the mandatory lunch break is to protect those employees. To prevent them from needing to assert their own rights and risk being discriminated against in the work place.

 

I would add to this line of thought that letting her do such a thing could contribute to a culture in the company of working off of the clock as fellow workers feel like their employment might be endangered if they don't have as much 'commitment' as this lady. Managers of fast food places and other low wage establishments do this all the time, extracting extra hours from workers for free with the implicit threat of termination. It's not a culture you want to perpetuate in a law-abiding company.

We have this culture problem in my company, though we're all salaried so no labor laws are broken. Management puts in policies to alleviate overtime work but employees are afraid to take advantage of them because their peers do not. To work a normal work week would mean less consideration for promotions, less compensation, and higher likelihood of lay-offs. If we actually enforced our overtime policies on everyone, people wouldn't have to look over their shoulder all the time. And the company would do better on their employee engagement surveys.

So, I see nothing wrong with canning her. She refused to do what the company told her to do.

 

You beat me to it, but your example and the post about Wal-Mart are exactly what I was thinking about. Other employees can suffer in that situation as they may feel pressured into working through their lunch. The employer doesn't have to tell them to do it.

 

You've nailed it imo. Exactly what I've been so uneloquently trying to say.

 

Yep, workplace violations could come from it.

 

Interesting points, and obviously I understand the difference between salaried employees, and hourly employees. My biggest problem (somewhat illustrated here), and you probably disagree, is the erosion of the rights of those hourly employees. I think we've gone from one extreme (think Detroit auto workers before the Big Three were hammered), to the other in terms of workers rights. This particular case may be an outlier, but it highlights, in my opinion, how the rights of hourly employees in "at will" states have been diminished. An employee of ten years standing gets tossed for working at her desk during lunch.

Like several states, Illinois has a law that requires employers to provide employees a lunch break. But the law cannot be read to require an employer to fire a worker who refuses to take a break in order to finish her work, said Michael LeRoy, law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Nonetheless, Illinois is an employment-at-will state, which means the employer can fire someone for a good reason, no reason, or a bad reason, as long as it is not discriminatory," he said.

So in Illinois, a law requires at least a 30 minute lunch break, but says nothing about a worker being required to take that break. Yet, at the same time, an employer can fire someone for any reason at all, as long as it isn't discriminatory. One might argue that the woman was discriminated against because she worked through lunch, but I realize that wasn't the intent of the law. What I don't like is that after countless decades of getting rights for workers (hourly employees), the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.