Ambigous Disqualification for Unemployment

I worked at a level III.5 medically supervised, residential in-patient treatment facility for over a year. Unemployment disqualified my claim for 'violating a known rule'. Included in my 67 page initial response, I proved-out multiple instances of management ordering me to go against published protocol over the entire range of my employ. I also submitted a single-patient case study of how we worked with patients that the COO personally did not like. In their primary reason, they cite an instance of violating a rule that i proved I sought guidance for, from management, over a six-week period. Management ignored me. All other staffers including the licensed clinical professional on the property, knew exactly what went on and were supportive in this instance. They also remained mute towards management. Am I wrong to think that that constituted an endorsement in good faith?

My argument is, how can any employee follow rules that are made up as management goes along? Is a published rule, and violation of that rule with demonstrated mitigating circumstances, proven on the employers own internal documents, still applicable as just cause for termination?

My initial response was very-very detailed and supported with internal documentation. I successfully proved-out 80% of the reasons my employer cited in their contest of my claim. Still I see a disqualification. Is it worth a request for redetermination? Should I continue toward an appeal and hearing? I have several former patients whom arewilling to draft statements regarding the conditions of the property I worked at and how typical the problem was that led to my decision to break the rule. They are legitimate and definately mitigating to any reasonable adjudicator. Is it worth it to keep persuing this claim? Montana

montanadigital said:

I worked at a level III.5 medically supervised, residential in-patient treatment facility for over a year. Unemployment disqualified my claim for 'violating a known rule'. Included in my 67 page initial response, I proved-out multiple instances of management ordering me to go against published protocol over the entire range of my employ. I also submitted a single-patient case study of how we worked with patients that the COO personally did not like.

My argument is, how can any employee follow rules that are made up as management goes along? Is a published rule, and violation of that rule with demonstrated mitigating circumstances, proven on the employers own internal documents, still applicable as just cause for termination?

My initial response was very-very detailed and supported with internal documentation. I successfully proved-out 80% of the reasons my employer cited in their contest of my claim. Still I see a disqualification. Is it worth a request for redetermination? Should I continue toward an appeal and hearing? Montana

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What would you lose if you appealed

Antigone*of*Greece said:

What would you lose if you appealed

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About 66 pages?

OP, no wonder you lost. No hearing officer/adjudicator is going to read your Great American Novel.

"Is a published rule, and violation of that rule with demonstrated mitigating circumstances, proven on the employers own internal documents, still applicable as just cause for termination?

My initial response was very-very detailed and supported with internal documentation. I successfully proved-out 80% of the reasons my employer cited in their contest of my claim. Still I see a disqualification. Is it worth a request for redetermination? Should I continue toward an appeal and hearing? I have several former patients whom arewilling to draft statements regarding the conditions of the property I worked at and how typical the problem was that led to my decision to break the rule. They are legitimate and definately mitigating to any reasonable adjudicator. Is it worth it to keep persuing this claim? Montana[/QUOTE]

What you did was violate the KISS rule. You are not supposed to argue the foundation of constitutional law here. The questions they need answered in an intial fact-finding are very simple questions, specifically designed to extract the information the claims taker and the adjudicator needs to reach an initial decision. A large amount of what you said you sent sounded extremely irrelevant to the basics, which would have been something like "What happened on the last day you worked?" "What was the rule or policy your employer has said you violated? Were you familiar with this rule? Did you violate it? Had you had any prior warnings or write ups about doing this? Had you been told your job was in jeopardy?

No where in here is the space for 62 pages of "well, yes, I may have violated a policy but this is why, and this is what was going on and this is the testimony of seven other people that this business wasn't run right and we had to do things to make things work, and here is a program I tried to submit last year that would have changed some procedures and they didn't accept it, and they knew we were violating some of the rules sometimes**************On and on and on. They're going to be bored, not be impressed, and will probably go with the simpler, less wordy evidence submitted by the employer. "Here was the rule. The employee broke the rule by..... She was terminated."

This was the initial decision denying benefits. Now if you get the appeal in timely, you can request an appeal and this time there will be a hearing where you and the employer will both be present to tell your side of the story. When you submit the appeal, do not send in any written material. Send something that says only "I wish to appeal this decision." Keep making your weekly certifications for benefits so you can be back paid if you are approved in the second decision.

Before you have the hearing, take the questions you were asked, exactly and answer them . Make it brief,factual, and specific. What were the specifics of the property where you worked which made it necessary to violate the policy? HAd you ever been warned about violating the policy? Did you know your job was in jeopardy if you violated the policy again?
When you go into the hearing, DO NOT carry in this horrible sixty page document. This is not a Reading, it is a Hearing. THey want to hear you speak and answer questions. IT is the responsibility of the employer, since they terminated you, they must prove that they had a good misconduct reason to terminate you. They must show you were familiar with the rule or procedure that you supposedly violated. That you knew that it was not supposed to be violated. That you had been warned and told that you must not do whatever it was. And then you went on and kept doing it.

And what you seem to be saying is that you were violating the procedure for a certain work related reason, that they were aware of the reason, were aware that the rule was being broken repeatedly, that they had not told you that your job was in jeopardy for violating of this rule. That you were trying to do your job to the best of your ability,

pattytx said:

About 66 pages?

OP, no wonder you lost. No hearing officer/adjudicator is going to read your Great American Novel.

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My response was only 2 pages. The supporting docs were the remainder. Isn't it their job to review my response? It satisfies the burden of proof overwhelmingly. I feel like 'fair labor' is just a punchline anymore. No life's not fair, but it's war on the middle class when you dismiss a claim that clearly makes a sound case, especially when the employer makes it a habit of ****ing people & employees over. Great American Novel, or overwhelming perponderance of evidence? Good-Old-College-Try? <-- tell that to my 3year old son when we finally end up homeless.

First of all, get over that you sent in such a wonderful case. Because the initial claims taking information seeker is not supposed to be anything like reviewing proofs and documents and arguments. It is their job to set up the basic bare bones case, to determine very simple answers to what should be very simple questions, and issue an initial decision. Then the more complicated issues can hopefully be worked out in the appeals hearing. Once again, no large piles of documentation is going to be very helpful. Some things, like their company rule book, either showing or not showing this rule in it. Copies of warnings they may have given you previously for violation of these policies. Notes they wrote you telling you to do a task in violation of the procedure.

If you do not answer the specific questions they ask, and you have submitted a very large document of Proofs for them to search through and see if they can find answers to the questions they need, chances are they'll get very tired of doing it and may miss something vital to your case. You say your documents provided proofs for about 80% of the reasons the employer said you were terminated. What if that other 20% was the most valid issue according to unemployment law?

I myself am having trouble just understanding this claim's issues. Let's see, there was a policy and they terminated you for violating this policy. But you have always violated the policy, you have reasons why you violate this policy, you have proved that it was totally necessary to violate this policy under these circumstances and these circumstances......But it boils down to, Was it the rule? Yes.You were aware of this rule? Yes. You violated this rule? "Yes, BUT, I had this excellent reason for doing so!" See, each time I did it, here here here and here, I had a good reason why I didn't follow this procedure!"

Then they'd say, "Did you discuss this situation with management?" and your answer seems to be yes, but they didn't agree with what we were telling them. So you kept on violating the procedure? Yes, but we were doing the right thing!!Ultimately if an employer wants something done a certain way, you can have a thousand angels arguing that your other way of doing it was better, but you have still been insubordinate and have violated a company rule.

Your best tack to take would probably be to say you felt you had the unspoken agreement of management to violate the procedure as it had been done that way for a long time, and you and others had had many discussions with managment about the procedure and how it needed to be changed. You can say you did your job to the best of your abilities and you did not expect to be terminated because you felt you were doing the best job possible.

The unemployment ajudicator and the appeals judge have as their job to review your responses, the employer's responses, and test according to unempoyment law.. The trouble is that your very heavily documented response that did not help in the initial appeal may not be what they need to find out, does not answer the questions they are looking for, does not present the best argument for your case in the hearing.

It has been my experience that once somebody sits down and creates a document like this, or a letter or a testimony statement, they are so all fired proud of it they can't understand how on earth anybody could possibly not accept their proof! Usually these sorts of documents contain snippets of unempoyment law taken from here and there and cited to prove the case. And most of the time, unless written by a person very familiar with unemployment law, they contain way too much of some things, not enough of others.

But the best thing you could do is start over and simplfy. Request an appeal. Then before the hearing, write yourself a very brief statement of the facts surrounding your termination, as you see them. Do not get muddled up in too much detail If you feel you need to, explain briefly as you would at a dinner talk, why you felt you had to violate the procedure sometimes. Be brief. Don't over complicate by trying to provide too much information.

Let someone outside this situation, a friend, unbiased observer read over what you are planning to say. Ask them if they can understand the issues. Ask them if they think it's too wordy or rambling. Ask for the truth. You will, after you have talked, be given the opportunity to ask the employer questions, and they will be given the opportunity to ask you questions. But keep this all simple, on task, and very logical and factual. YOu will not dazzle anyone with the hammering truth of your facts, you'll do much better if you project yourself as a reasonable professional, who always did your best on your job, and always tried to follow the rules when possible.

This will very much improve you chances of winning in the second appeal.
Give them the pertinent facts, verbally. Don't try to hand them "War & Peace" to read. They simply won't do it. Just present the facts. And you'll have a fair to okay chance of prevailing in the next hearing.

Included in my 67 page initial response

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So, what the heck did THAT mean then?

Two pages of response, 65 pages of proofs and documents. TOO MUCH of everything.

commentator said:

Two pages of response, 65 pages of proofs and documents. TOO MUCH of everything.

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yeah, about 66 pages worth.

Slim Version

Ok. Let me rephrase.
My initial claim was disputed by employer.
Claims-processing sends a letter specifically asking me to respond to 2 pages of questions. My response was 2-pages outlining exactly what they asked me about. To prove/justify my answers, I included memos, minutes of meetings, and relevant articles. They speak to the nature of our approach to handling patients on an individual basis.

The rule I broke I also sought guidance for, from management and was ignored for six-weeks.

Does that matter when they also order you to violate the rules when they see fit, then turn around and fire you when it's convenient for them? I was also never given any diciplinary write up's or opportunity for training, no sanctions & no indication from on-site professionals that I was in the wrong.
Aside from that our company treated every instance of every patients behavior individually. The micromanagement drove me nuts, but I came through in fine style nearly all of the time. I don't think anyone can be held to a standard that changes every day.

I really did submit facts relevant to exactly the questions claims wanted answered. I was not able to pin down management on the 1 instance they claim to have fired me for, so there is the 20% grey area I feel wasn't 'proved-out' on. My termination was contrived, but it seems that doesn't matter even though reading the response they requested makes clear sense.

Either Way

I don't think I will prevail.
My responses were clearly stated & proofed by a double Masters friend and colleague before submission.

Again I only provided what I was asked for, but I knew the budget was deeply in the red so I started keeping paperwork fastidously.

My organization has extremely high turn around rates and I would say they are pros' at screwing the hourly staff out of unemployment as a rule.

Thank you folks for the advice and the time it took to try and wade through it.

~Truly appreciated

Notice how the OP has deliberately avoided saying which rule he broke. I find this telling and an indication that it may constitute blatent misconduct.

Agree swalsh, if the reason for termination was something significant, and all the other proof and argument was smoke screen for yes, I knew it was against the rules. I chose deliberately do do it anyway. But ,but .but, here are thirty more reasons why they were inconsistent in their enforcment of this rule, and why it was really better if we did it this way, and I had seen people do it this way and not be fired**************

If an employer wishes to terminate an employee, they must show that they had a valid, misconduct reason to do so. THey must in most cases show they had told the employee not to do this. That they had given the employee the chance to correct the problem, stop doing whatever it was. THe employee had done it again. They terminated the employee.

The employee can argue they didn't know about the rule, or they were not warned about the rule. They can say they tried to convince management this was a bad rule. But they cannot expect to prevail if their argument was that yes, they broke the rule, though they had been told not to, because of this reason, and this reason and this reason. They gotcha.

And it may be very unfair. They may allow others to break the rule without discipline. They may encourage people under some circumstances to break the rule. They do not have to be fair or consistent in their enforcement. They can, if they so desire terminate an employee for any reason at any time. (Though they may be liable for this termination later and in some cases and some states) Nowhere is it written or said that it has to be fair.

You should appeal. But keep your proofs out. Keep everything out but the answers to the basic claims questions they asked originally. Stop talking as soon as you are through these issues. Listen and answer the questions asked of you by the judge and the employer. Do not let the phrase "It's unfair!" or "It's not fair!" come out of your lips.

montanadigital said:

I successfully proved-out 80% of the reasons my employer cited in their contest of my claim.

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I'm no mathmagician, but it seems to me that would leave 20% that you COULDN'T counter.

swalsh411 said:

Notice how the OP has deliberately avoided saying which rule he broke. I find this telling and an indication that it may constitute blatent misconduct.

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Therein lies the ambiguity, they didnt tell me which rule I broke either.
Very Vague, Very Shady.