Zigner
Senior Member, Non-Attorney
Quoted to remove your email.Minnesota
I have a work comp lawyer but his job is a fine line and was to get my injury declaired a work comp injury. But my situation is spilling out of if the work comp relm.
I was hurt at work while working. I was a baggage handler for nwa for 5 years at the time. I was lifting a heavy bag and felt a pop in my side. The insurance company sent me to a strip mall Dr who said I was too fat to figure out the reason I got hurt but if I was skinny it might not have happened. Since I had been fat a long time he said my obesity was a pre existing condition. With that I was let go from work because my injury left me disabled. (I can never lift more then 20 pounds the rest of my life)
The company has a accommodations department but since it was viewed as my fault for being hurt they refused to help me.
I liked the travel perks so I found another job within the company. But I was viewed as being off the street. I lost my seniority and took a large paycut.
My work comp claim went before a judge and I won. The judge said my weight had nothing to do with my injury and it was a work comp injury.
It was a small victory. 160 days later my department announces we are adding 9 supervisor positions. I asked if I could apply for one of the positions and I was told they were only interviewing people who were at risk to lost their job because of the merger. The 9 were hired from other departments making the ratio about 35 women to 2 men in the department. Yet right after they were hired I was pulled into a office and told my position was being eliminated and in a few weeks I would be let go.
Due to the merger a severance package is on the table and I had 5 days to pick it. Not picking it ment I was still out of a job so im basically forced to take a severance. But the severance is based on my new pay cut wage not my pre-injury wage. The State of minnesota has ruled I have a work comp injury. Thus my wages should not be affeceted. Meaning I should get my full severance.
HAD I been accommodated under the program NWA offers to injured workers my pay would not have been affected I would not be in the current position I am in now. It would have been in my own work area that does not have any layoffs currently. I would not have lost my seniority. I would not be losing my job.
I dont know if its cause im a man with the female / male ratio being about 35 to 2 soon to be 35 to 1 when Im gone. Im not sure its because I won my fat case because it was only 160 days after I won that im being let go.
Also, was there a question in there?