Illegally Fired, Abused, and Put at Risk?

>>What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

California

Our girlfriend was fired yesterday, June 11th, 2010, near the end of her first week of employment. The reason given for firing her was that she failed to purchase new auto inusrance through her new employer, a Farmer's insurance agent.

As far as we know, this is illegal; when she checked with Farmer's they specifically said this was illegal, and that they have no policies requiring employees to purchase all their insurance through their agencies.

In addition to this firing, our girlfriend was verbally abused daily, berated with screaming and yelling when she refused to break the law on a regular basis at the behest of her employer.

Her research showed that if she wrote and sold insurance policies without a license the insurance policies would be legally voided by the company in the event of a claim and she would become personally and fully liable for all damages claimed.

Her employer insisted she write and sell policies on her own, without a license, and abused her when she limited herself to either writing policies or selling policies written by her employer, but not doing both activites concurrently for any one customer, which would break the law as she understands it.

We are grateful that, to the best of our knowledge, this employer has not tricked our girlfriend into breaking the law by having her sell policies written by her unlicensed coworkers that he might have misrepresented to her as his own work.

The previous person to hold our girlfriend's new job was also fired after only one week for not purchasing insurance though this employer.

This employer owns two insurance offices and a restaurant and requires all employees at all three sites to purchase all of their insurance through him or else be terminated.

We desprately needed this job to avoid being evicted from our home. What recourse do we have? We have never particpated in a frivolous lawsuit; we have shunned the law in general because we typically believe it is too frequently abused, so we are uncertain whether we have a right or responsibility to pursuit this matter.

We believe this employer is an abusive bully breaking numerous laws, in addition to putting his employees and clients at risk.

Other issues that appear to be illegal employment conditions include:

Requiring her to sell insurance on her own time, without pay, to her family, friends and neighbors.

Requiring her to clock in early for time that would not be paid before her official start time of 9 AM, and then clean the office until 9 AM without pay.

Requiring her to take her lunch breaks in the office, not allowing her to take a full hour for lunch, and requiring her to work during her lunch break, without pay, if she was needed.

How should we proceed?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Grigori Rho Gharveyn, aka Roger Holler, Greg Gourdian, etc...

Background:
We share the same employment background as this employer, we both used to work for IBM as IT specialists. Similar unfair employment practices were rife in IBM, which may be why he thinks it is appropriate for him to abuse his own employees the same way we were abused by IBM; he was almost certainly abused by IBM in a similar manner.

Please note, we have no financial resources at this time, our disability income is insufficient to cover our joint expenses without a second income from our girlfriend.

You guys sharing a girlfriend? Kinky.

Anyway, it is not illegal to insist that employees use the products they sell. If it were, you better get on the horn to Coke..... because they don't respond well to people bringing in a Pepsi product to the workplace.

Being yelled at is not illegal. Jerkalicious, but not illegal.

Lastly, your collective girlfriend was NOT being asked to do anything illegal. What she was being required to do was to make cold calls and sign up clients that the broker would then sign off on.

Happens every day. In every insurance office in the country.

Boy, that's a lot of mistreatment for one week of employment. Okay, if she was not paid at least minimum wage for the hours she worked, she can contact Wage and Hour in CA, file a complaint. Otherwise, I see nothing illegal in the whole process. Nothing you folks could sue this employer for. Being a jerk who runs through employees isn't a violation of law.

True, he may have instructed her to do something illegal, which was sell policies without a license, or maybe she didn't understand the process. Anyhow, she didn't, he fired her. He certainly had a right to terminate her for any reason. He violated no laws by yelling at her and talking mean to her. If he had demanded sexual favors, physically assaulted her or demeaned her specifically and particularly because she was a member of an EEOC protected group, that might have been a very modest case for an EEOC violation. Demanding that she purchase insurance through his company or he would fire her gives her distinct options, quit the job, be fired, or buy her insurance through his company.

If she has been working enough in the last 18 months elsewhere, she needs to file for unemployment insurance. She should file, just to determine if the eligibility requirements are in place. If she has enough covered wages to qualify, she may qualify based on this "unjust" termination (the employer did not seem to have a good misconduct reason for the termination) but other than that, I see nothing that you can sue this person for, or even file a complaint about unless it's related to wages and hours worked.

If you were actually able to pursue this matter, if a lawsuit was a possibility, if there were a law forbidding what this person did, what would you want, her to have the job back, working for this jerk and for him to totally change his ways? Or him have to pay her a huge amount of money because during that one week he hurt her feelings so badly? It ain't going to happen.

Any lawsuit even if there was one, and even unemployment in the best of circumstances is not going to happen soon enough to save you from foreclosure. Your girlfriend was looking for a job when she got this one, I strongly suggest she file for unemployment insurance and quickly go about looking for another job.