unfair treatment by employer

[ccarter]

i live in the state of missouri and my husband recently (Aug 2001) got a job as a supervisor at a saw mill. he loved his job and was doing well or so we thought. the man who hired my husband is the owner of the company and its a small company run by him and his son. anyway my husband had went over there originally to apply for a driving job because their drivers started out at $10 an hour. while there the boss offered him the supervisor posistion and said that while he usually started supervisors at $8.50 an hour he would go ahead and start him at 10. I went to work there shortly after and was fired, for missing too many days, although they were excused and it states that if you have excused abscenses you will not be terminated for them. I did not want to cause problems for my husband though, so i did not push the issue. my husband had an accident in november and missed 3 days of work. when he returned the owners son was not nice to him at all and had basically removed him from his posistion. he put him doing some of the most horrible jobs in the plant and my husband did them without complaint. now he has been officially removed from position and they have put another employee in his place. there is talk of cutting his wages because they cannot pay him to do "regular" work at $10 an hour. now we live in a very small rural community and it is hard to find work so my husband has done everything they asked and they still treat him unfairly. i don't know if we can take this to the labor board or what are options are. i would appreciate any help on this subject. we are pretty sure they are trying to treat him badly enough that he will just quit and he needs this job but he has just been sick, almost physically, about losing it. especially this close to christmas. how can employers get away with this?

 

[loku]

Unfortunately, I can not think of any help the law would be to your husband. And to answer your question, employers can get away with this because the law is that without a contract, an employer can fire an employee at any time, and the employer does not need a good reason, as long as it is not discrimination against one of the following protected classes: race, religion, national origin, disability, color, and age.

 

[ccarter]

Thank you for you answer. Let me ask you this, I have been doing some reading on something called "constructive termination", and from what I understand it is when an employer does things to make a person quit. Does cutting my husbands wages from $10 down to $7 consitute this? They are not talking about other wages, just his. They seem to have singled him out for some reason neither of us can figure out. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

 

[cbg]

I don't believe a salary cut is sufficient to support a constructive discharge case. To qualify, the action taken by the employer has to be such that no reasonable person would have any option except to quit.

 

[ccarter]

cbg, thank you for your reply. I am doing some checking into this. I don't know any reasonable person that would be fine with getting a cut in pay for no reason whatsoever. The whole purpose of his taking that job was because they were paying him 10 an hour, he explicitly told them when he started that he had to have at least 10 an hour. They knew that when they hired him. Again, thanks for replying, I do appreciate everyone who takes time to try and help out.

 

[cbg]

ccarter, just "not being fine" with it is not enough. The employer's conduct has to be so outrageous that quitting is the only possible recourse. I truly do not believe that a pay cut qualifies at that level.

 

[ccarter]

Thanks cbg for your replies.