Mom Donates Kidney To Son - Gets Fired
If you would like to be known as the worst company in the world for which to work, Aviation Institute of Maintenance is really trying to take home that prize. Claudia Rendon is a woman who had worked for the company. She asked for some time off because her son needed a life saving kidney transplant. Claudia was a match. Everything went well and the son is going to live. When Claudia went back to work, the company told her they had already filled her position.
Now, to be fair, Claudia did sign an agreement that says she understood there might not be a job waiting for her when she got back and she had used all her vacation because her mother and uncle had both died during the year and her dad diagnosed with leukemia. Wow. That is a lot to happen in one year.
The company says that Claudia was a great employee, and now they will be faced with this hopefully wave of horrible publicity coming down on them from everywhere while some goodhearted person in Philadelphia will probably give her a job.
Granted she is not disabled but isn't there anything legally she can do against her employer?
ReplyDeleteI knew a guy who had a nervous breakdown after his eldest daughter was killed in a plane crash. He committed himself to a hospital for a while soon afterward; he just didn't feel like he was equipped to handle his grief without assistance. He was canned as soon as he returned to work two weeks later.
ReplyDeleteAnd on a smaller and less tragic scale scale, what's the average maternity leave in America? I'd be shocked if women get so much as four weeks off. Other countries give their female employees ample time to bond with their infants, but that doesn't happen very often over here. Getting pregnant, more often than not, can jeopardize a woman's position within her company.
If you work for a corporation, the people in charge DO NOT CARE about you, your children, your spouse, parents, etc. They *only* give a crap about profits. If you're not productive, you're gone. End of story.
I'd think this should have been an excused absence covered under FEMLA....family emergency medical leave.
ReplyDeleteEmployers are supposed to honor them aren't they?
I bet this happens all the times=. These companies never think it might be made public.
ReplyDeleteGood for her for making this public.
I wonder how people like this sleep at night ?
ReplyDeleteIda, I think the maternity leave issue is kind of a double-edged sword. While in European countries, companies can't legally discriminate against females, it does still happen in the hiring process. A guy from our Italian office was visiting and he commented about how Italian companies have a lower percentage of females working. If you were a hiring manager and were deciding between two equally-qualified candidates and one of them might suddenly go on paid leave for 6-12 months (depending on the country), which would you choose to hire?
ReplyDeleteFMLA mandates 12 weeks of leave for a serious health condition, and maternity and adoption leave if the employer has more than 50 employees and the employee requesting leave has been employed for at least 12 months and has worked 1250 hours in the most recent 12 months. We don't know the size of this company. The are not obligated to hold her job for more than 12 weeks. We don't know how long she was out. If she was out less than 12 weeks and qualified for FMLA, then the company has problems with the Feds. We also don't know if her absence caused any problems for the company and they needed to fill as soon as 12 weeks were up. Or, maybe it is too small to fall under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
ReplyDeleteYes, I work in HR and my personal RAM (brain) is filled with this stuff.
I would like more details on this one.
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ReplyDeleteThis is horrifying. It's companies like this one that doesn't deserve loyalty from its employees. I would wish for the company to go out of business, but I wouldn't want the rest of its innocent employees to lose their jobs in this economy. This woman deserves a medal, not to be fired. Whoever runs this company should be ashamed. What a Scrooge. I hope the owner gets visited by 3 ghosts this xmas.
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to justify the company's actions. But I went to the news site and they had a link to a legal explanation. The company is within its legal rights to fire her because it's a small company. That's oversimplifying a little, but that's the gist.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of thing happens all over the country. It's a shame.
Just because something is legally permissible doesn't make it morally right.
By the way, I love her son's statement. "Not many people can say their mother gave them life twice."
I suppose this is one good things about widespread media - she will assuredly be offered a better job somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteSadly, Mary Ann is right...
ReplyDeleteThe "justification" being that a small company has fewer employees to pick up the leave-taker's work. They just passed a "paid sick days off" rule here in Seattle that works similarly; larger companies are required to provide more paid sick days for employees than smaller ones (I think it's a 3-tiered system).
Not saying it's fair or moral, but sadly, it IS legal...
Here's to the City of Brotherly Love and hoping this woman receives a MUCH bettre job than she had at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance (school motto: "We AIM to f*ck you o'er...").
Good luck, peace and blessings to you and your son, Claudia!
@Ida - Almost all of my girlfriends have gotten at least 12 weeks maternity leave, some with it being fully paid.
ReplyDeleteAfter the terrible year this poor woman has had, I hope if she doesn't find another job soon, that her former co-workers/friends do some kind of fundraiser for her until she can. Someone should submit her story to Ellen!
I think almost all employment contracts include this clause unless it states explexitively that you cannot be fired. Happened to me before. Got into an accident (almost died) in the hospital for 4 weeks, got laid off two weeks afterwards. Picked myself back up and have a way better job today. So glad they laid me off or else I would have quit!
ReplyDeleteOnly 8% of US companies offer paid maternity leave. Women without paid leave take an average of 6 weeks off, women with paid leave take an average of 10 weeks off
ReplyDelete(according to US News and World Report: http://money.usnews.com/money/articles/2009/09/15/7-strategies-for-a-successful-maternity-leave)
Kind of low if you ask me.
In Canada we get one full year of maternity leave, though the benefits are only around 60% of our regular salary during that time. Once again, so GLAD to be Canadian ;)
ReplyDeletewow - in Australia it is legislated that all women are entitled to 18 weeks paid maternity leave and if it is a small company this is funded by the federal goverment. You can also have 52 weeks unpaid parental leave (which can be shared between both the mother and the father but must be taken by the childs first birthday). At the company I work at (a large telco) we have just upped the amount of time someone can take maternity leave from 1 year to 2, and men have access to the same amount of time for paternity leave if they are the primary carer
ReplyDeleteIn Sweden all working parents are entitled to 16 months paid leave (half is paid by the employer and the other by the state). 2 out of those months are reserved for the "minority parent", i.e. the dad, or the mom who did not carry the baby.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, Canada is still pretty sweet! :)
Companies like this are the reason I started my blog.
ReplyDeleteThey only care about one thing Profit.
Companies sell their soul to the stock market devil.
visit my site and comment on the worst job you have ever had.
Maybe workers can find stregnth in numbers.
Maybe we can shame them into doing better.
She's already been rehired-www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/kidney-donor-mom-put-back-on-salary-091311
ReplyDeletePA is not a right to work state; if you don't have a detailed contract or are not a union worker you pretty much have no rights (except FMLA and EOE). You have to abide by your company's policies but your company does not and you can be fired for informing you supervisor that your company is far out of compliance with numerous federal regulations and suggestion corrective action (even when your company's policies specifically state retaliation against an employee for raising this sort of issue will not be tolerated; you may have some luck if the DOJ files a suit against your company but good luck with that).
ReplyDeleteThat being said, it is a hardship for a company (especially a small one) to have to keep hiring and training temps for certain positions. If she's been out and used up all her vacation and all FMLA for which she was qualified for and then, shortly after returning to work, needs to be out for an extended period again that does present a legitimate difficulty for most companies. It is unfair how they make the company and the manager out to be evil people (at this time they can not divulge how much she has been out or any other confidential employment details to the reporter). They didn't fire her because she needed to take time off to donate the kidney they had to replace her because she was out so much (even for legitimate reasons) and they needed some continuity in staffing.
I'm sorry she's faced so much hardship in one year (really, I've been caring for two sick parents who've died over the past 2 years - I can't imagine having to deal with a sick child in that mix); it's nice the company was able to rehire her but this sort of emotional blackmail really wasn't fair to the company, manager or other staff.
@Patty (or anyone else) - Is organ donation even covered under FMLA? I mean, I would have thought so but a little surfing seems to imply that it doesn't and that only a few states (and not PA) have increased the FMLA's coverage to include it. I suppose the strange reasoning would be that organ donations are voluntary?
ReplyDelete@Maja - I guess that's "socialism" for ya! ;)
ReplyDeleteMaternity leave depends on your state. I'm in CA and we have three different job protected leaves (FMLA - 12 weeks, CA Preg Dis - usually 2 weeks before birth and 6 weeks after but can be up to 4 months for a serious problem, CFRA - 12 weeks baby bonding). We also have two paid leaves (CA disability leave that runs with the Preg Dis leave, Paid Family Leave - up to 6 weeks for bonding) that pays at about 55% of normal pay with the option of using sick/vacation hours to make up the difference. This is funded through payroll taxes and you have to be employed somewhere in CA to have enough quarter credits in the base period. Most of my employees are out three to six months and we're pretty supportive of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd new to CA in 2011, employers with 15 or more employees are required to give up to 30 days job protected leave for organ donation which doesn't count against the 12 weeks of FMLA leave. Up to 5 days leave for bone marrow donation.
@RocketQueen- Socialism rocks!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd I LOVE that in many European/Scandinavian countries that father's to be ALSO get lengthy paternity leave. I think this has gone a long way in helping solidfy men as equal partners in a child's responsibility....a friend went somewhere abroad with this system in action and she remarked how many dads she saw with children....its truly ick how in America, in all sorts of ways, we foster a division between moms and dads and their roles in raising kids.
btw- that quote from her son is insanely AWESOME and sweet :)))
ReplyDeleteJasmine, I haven't lived in Sweden for many years, but I know that among parents from my generation (i.e my friends back home who have kids), the father is really expected to take on half of the parental leave. It's even considered a little bit weird if they don't, like "what's wrong with you?". When I was born (in the 70's) they had the right to take paternity leave but it wasn't as common. My dad stayed home with me for a while and he was one of the first. Then when my sister came along 10 years later, it was expected that he would do it.
ReplyDeleteThere is an awesome New York Times article about this somewhere, I'll see if I can find it...
Ahem...he was one of the first, at least among the people I knew...
ReplyDelete@Jasmine - Canada also has that :) The first 9 weeks (I believe) after birth is maternity leave, then it switches to "paternal leave" here - either parent can take the paternal leave, or we can split it! It's pretty awesome and guaranteed as long as you have a certain amount of time put in with your company.
ReplyDeleteI once worked with a woman who donated a kidney to her son. She didn't get fired, but her husband left the family while they were in the hospital. Yes, the husband was the father of said sick son. There was another little boy in the family too.
ReplyDeleteI thought I had dated all the assholes on earth, but mercifully I missed that one.
@Maja and RocketQueen-
ReplyDeleteyou LUCKY dogs you!
But its not all that surpising ya'll come from such a fantastic place, since you're both such awesome women!
hehe, this compliment was served with a slight side of cheese :-O