My ex company fired me for attendance violations.
The company views attendance as this listed below.
If an employee misses a day of work,
This counts as 1 missed day and 1 occurrence.
If the employee misses 7 days of work, this is counted as 7 days and 1 occurrence.
If the employee misses work due to any covered FMLA covered incident it is counted as X days of work and 1 occurrence.
When ether the days of work missed equal 12 days or 7 occurrences, (I don't remember the correct days) this will trigger disciplinary action up to and including termination. And there are 5 steps before termination.
When this rule went into effect, because I had surgery for an existing condition, I made it to notice of termination, ie step 4. That was in 2011. It has a rolling calendar of 1 year before it drops down a step.
During the next 8 years, do to ether otj injury or existing condition absence, all of which were covered by fmla, I could never get the disciplinary actions reduced. I was forever stuck at warning of termination. The reason, occurrence count. And the rolling calendar never reset it just kept adding on occurrences. I was under lots of pressure and my health declined ptsd for walking an edge being fired.
Que my being fired for attendance, one unauthorized day missed, which I believed had been authorized because of past experiences with the company.
My life went out of control mentally. Drug use and rehab. It was bad.
Remember all previous absences were counted under FMLA or OTJ injuries.
In short I won the case for wrongful termination in a lawsuit.
3 checks cut.
One as back wages
One to my attorney
And one as emotional distress.
Is the check cut for emotional distress counted as taxable?
I believe it is because all the absences that triggered this were ether surgery or otj injuries which because of a broken system that counted occurrences held me to a standard of attendance, even though protected by law, lead me to termination.
Ie if I hadn't missed work because of the injury from work and or missed work because I had carpet tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel and TOS that needed surgery so I could function in the position, none of the disciplinary actions would have happened.
Please help
