GRIEVANCE / RETALIATION
Please accept this letter as the grievants formal grievance and Letter of Intent, of pursuing Retaliation, Harassment and Hostile Working Conditions charges against your company in relation to offenses perpetrated upon on her by your company and specifically Ms. Susan Taylor - Administrator - Pearl Street Nursing and Rehab Center, Littleton, Colorado.
We request that these issues be investigated in accordance with the following laws and statutes:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, volume 42 of the United States Code, section 2000e. (Title VII) (Retaliation)
Colorado Revised Statutes 8-3-108(1)(c)(I) Unfair Labor practices
Colorado Employment Security Act, ref; Title 8-73-108 (4)(c) Unsatisfactory working conditions
The claimant feels that she was willfully and maliciously, forced to resign her position of nearly three years with this employer, due to a willful and direct attack of retribution by Ms. Susan Taylor - Nursing Home Administrator, Pearl Street Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which started immediately after the claimant filed a formal grievance against the Administrator to the Regional Human Resources Director - Ms. Beth Link. The grievance was filed as a result of the claimants continued requests for the Administrator to take action against nursing and management staff who refused to assist in the dietary department.
The Grievant, Claimant, Victim, (henceforth referred to as claimant), in her nearly three years as the Director of Food Service, has on numerous occasions begged the Administrator to give her some help in relation to the scheduling of when the nursing department brings the facility residents to the dining room for the two scheduled feedings. Company Policy requires that ALL facility staff , to include management, are required to assist in helping the residents get seated and served, however it is very common that many staff and managers rarely if ever show up to assist.
This lack of assistance from the nursing and management staff creates an impossible situation for the dietary department to serve everyone on the required schedule and results in residents being fed late as well as the second feeding being pushed back even later. The result is that dietary staff are forced to work later then their normal scheduled shifts. This issue has been addressed with the Administrator by the claimant nearly daily throughout her nearly three years at the facility and the Administrator flatly refuses to hold any of those staff accountable for refusing to assist in the dining room.
The claimant has filed numerous complaints over the past two years with the Regional Human Resources Director - Ms. Beth Link, to in some way help in mediating the matter, (15 copies of e-mails dating back over two years, as well as a prior Formal Grievance filed by this firm, dated February 28th, 2009, are available as direct evidence / exhibits), but instead of helping the claimant with the issue, the employer began the process of direct retaliation by demanding that the claimant must now cut the hours of all of the staff in her departments hours from 8 hours per day, down to 6, which not only jeopardizes their eligibility for health care benefits, it also creates an even more impossible and unsafe working condition in which a staff members must effectively try to condense 8 hours worth of work into only 6 hours (an impossible task) and thus forces staff to skip breaks and lunches in order to allow them sufficient time to get the legally required clean up and side work done. This even more extreme condition has placed even more pressure on the claimant to cover for her staff who already could not finish their required side work for fear of working beyond the new time restraints. The employer began sending staff to the Dietary Department to report back to her, IF anyone appeared to be working off the clock which would result in counseling sessions.
Additionally, the claimant, who is a petite 50 year old woman, recently had to have total hip replacement surgery, which was essentially needed as a direct result of the extreme work load placed on her by the employer. The claimant actually returned to work a month early after her surgery despite her surgeons recommendations, due to her extreme dedication to her facility, staff and residents. However despite her condition, the employer rather then allowing her extra staff to assist with heavy lifting, instead took away the authorized hours allotted to a have a strong, male staff member, help put away the weekly delivery of groceries to the facility, which is delivered by two strong men utilizing hand carts and averaging $2,300, per week. These deliveries which included boxes of food stuffs and chemical containers weighing approximately 70 pounds each, often times had to be carried down stairs to storage, due to the elevators constantly being out of order. This created yet another impossible situation which not only risked the claimants re-injuring her hip, but could have caused her to fall down the stairs with the extremely heavy loads. This job duty was beyond reasonable for a Manger and we feel was done with willful intent.
With this new push against the claimant and her department, she was often required as a department head, to actually help cover for her staff who must now leave early without getting their work done, and required the claimant to actually do their dishes and side work for them. It should be pointed out that all other department heads have assistants and are never required to fill in for their staff. The claimant who was one of the ONLY salaried department heads, was required to stay late and come in early often times without ever taking any sort of break or lunch, and had to regularly work far in excess of 60 hours per week without any sort of compensation to include compensation time for extra days she worked to cover shifts, clearly in direct violation of Federal Wage & Hour laws. Most other department heads are compensated with overtime pay at 40 hours. The claimant never received so much as a thank you for her hard work, much less any additional pay. The claimant who recently was voted the Employee of the Year for 2010, has never in her entire time with this employer, taken even one sick day off, often works very early in the morning until late at night, five to six days a week, and constantly fields phone calls from her staff at all hours of the night and day, again without any sort of compensation.
Additionally, the claimant never received a single disciplinary action and felt that rather then building a case against her with write ups, the employer preferred to make the working conditions as hard as humanly possible on her to force her to quit a job that she loved, which had a fairly good pay rate and which no one would ever consider leaving in the current economy, but with the extreme conditions she had to endure, she simply could no longer physically or mentally continue as it threatened her health and ultimately her life.
In closing, although the claimant followed all of the employers policies regarding formal grievances, and was assured of protection by corporate, she feels that no protection against retaliation was offered and it seems that the retaliation was even supported by the Regional Human Resources Director.