by Tina
(Wisconsin )
I worked at this place of employment for 10 months. According to the handbook, we are allowed 7 occurrences, and we are supposed to receive a verbal warning at 3, a written warning at 5, and discharge at 7. I missed days due to my child being sick, my father being in the hospital & myself being ill. I always called in. I never received ANY written or verbal warnings. I came to work on a Tuesday, and was told i was up to 7, but i was allowed to work that day. My supervisor knew i had to miss the next day for court. I still called in. I was then terminated. Can i collect unemployment?
The Difference is in Proving Why a Discharge for Absenteeism Wasn’t for Misconduct
First off, your employer sounds to have a point system for identifying when someone’s attendance at work .. isn’t working for the employer. And it also sounds as if they had a progressive discipline policy that laid out the escalating measures it’s employees could reasonably expect the employer to follow that literally warn an employee of when their job is in jeopardy of being terminated, if they don’t start attending work as required.
But when an employer ignores using their own policy to not warn an employee to not frivolously miss work, it’s the employer who begins to weaken their own burden of proof to prove the employee guilty of work related misconduct.
Attendance point systems, are to my way of thinking, a lazy system when it comes to how unemployment insurance often works to also examine at minimum, the final occurrence of absenteeism to find out whether the employee could of reasonably avoided missing work, or if the employer merely exercised it’s right to fire a person at will for no cause, good cause, or the cause the employees attendance inconvenienced the best business interests all employees are their to serve.
The point being, I think point systems force employers to ignore the extenuating circumstances that people may be able to prove the underlying cause for being gone from work, as being beyond their control.
If you were to read enough similar questions about getting fired and the individual’s ability to collect unemployment after being fired for missing too much work, you’ll notice my basic advice that I still harp on incessantly, is contingent of an employee documenting to prove the truth as a fact later, after filing for benefits.. so they can more easily prove why the final incident and preferably all former occurrences of absenteeism, were reasonably speaking, beyond the claimant’s own ability to control.
Missing work due to Court, sick kids, personal illness, emergency Dr. visits, all that stuff should be expected when an employer requires employees to run their business.
But to then apply an arbitrary point system that ignores reasons that can be verified as good reason, when/if a person reaches the termination threshold .. without any prior progressive paper trail that could produce warnings to show the employer was aware their job was in jeopardy that ignore the reasons an employee may be able to produce documentation that shows good cause for being gone from work is what can literally strengthen a claimants opportunity to punch some serious holes in the employer’s burden to prove why missing work amounts to misconduct of such a degree the claimant’s behavior .. aligns with one of those words in the definition for misconduct.
Chris – Unemployment-Tips.com