Unemployed workers face a bewildering set of procedural burdens, unhelpful laws and hearing examiners of questionable quality and wisdom in some instances. These are their stories.
TT* was a highly respected person in his field until a severe long-term side effect of an improperly prescribed medicine took away some, but certainly not all, of his brain functions. TT could still sell _________________ like a madman, but could not handle a computer, a cash register, tasks involving logistics or mathematics or geometry. TT worked for years in a leading institution in his field but for an abusive, nasty boss who demeaned him repeatedly for his disabilities in front of co-workers. After one particularly abusive day at annual celebration, where TT was asked not to do sales but to arrange chairs and logistics and was humiliated by his boss yet again, TT left the institution to avoid a scene. TT was fired, requested unemployment benefits and was denied benefits due to "gross misconduct" after nearly 25 years of association with the institution. We fought the hearing hard, but an infamously hostile hearing examiner slammed the gates on benefits for my worker after a long, contested hearing.
Welcome to my world where I am honored to fight for the faces staring up from the bottom of the economic well.
OO* was an immigrant from a Middle Eastern country, with good child care skills but not too much in English fluency or familiarity with American culture. After several years as a successful day care worker for a mega-child care conglomerate's local office, management fired OO after she, in a spirit of play, lifted a favorite child by his feet over an empty trash can to make him laugh. Fortunately we were able to get a hearing examiner in that case to enter a finding of mere petty misconduct, allowing for benefits after a sanction of 5-10 weeks penalty. OO and her husband RO brought their children into my office - not always the most welcome of events in a small office but in this case it was a pure delight to see a smiling boy and girl in my office with their loving parents.
YY was a young foreman on a construction site in Baltimore. He had once left his employer to join the union electrician's pool, but post-Bush economics left the union pool bereft of work, so he applied to join back with his old job, and they took him, but with an asterisk next to his name. On a job site, YY was open and outspoken to the job's client about how a proposed electrical layout would fail and cause additional problems and hazards. For his outspokenness, YY got fired by management. At the contested benefits hearing, management basically admitted that it was resentful of YY's prior attempt to work through the union, but our examiner found misconduct anyway - but the petty sort so my client eventually got to earn.
LM was a student nurse who was given two different sets of instructions on whether she could administer medicine. She followed the more liberal instructions and got fired. At her initial hearing she was not found to have engaged in misconduct but the job appealed. At the next hearing level, LM missed her hearing due to a medical emergency involving prescribed anti-psychotic medicine that she needed in order to function, appealed but only called the Board, rather than wrote them, about her medical emergency. The Board of Appeals turned down her appeal. My office is now assisting her pro bono in her next appeal to Circuit Court.
Sometimes you win one or two. We got benefits for a worker who quit after management insisted that he participate in a fraudulent billing scheme, pretending to be an "accountant" when he had no such accounting training, credentials or work product. We got benefits for a worker whose boss had claimed he had called the worker and offered work, but no such calls registered on the worker's cell phone records. We fought hard for a public employee and union welder who failed a drug test, but had been taking prescription Marinol lawfully and had not been given a legally required opportunity to re-test his urine - we were overjoyed to win full benefits for the worker on that one.
I mention these stories in part because it is always a good idea to expose blue-collar life, the sort of petty backstabbing from management that often accompanies fired workers in their weakest, most demoralized hour. I also mention these because the 2% of me that is still morally Catholic, rather than hard-core atheist, sometimes encounters the need to confess and atone.
For a number of years I was an activist in the Libertarian Party, albeit on its left wing - more of a Cheech and Chong libertarian than a Rand Paul one. Libertarian economics is easy, simple - just like Newtonian physics, it can appear real to the naked eye. Yet the human capital lost, the moral damage inflicted, by the act of throwing dirt down on the faces at the bottom of the well - somehow that doesn't show up on a libertarian balance sheet. When I faced this uncomfortable reality head-on, without apology, I registered Democratic the same week. Perhaps in another 4 years my "soul" will feel whole again.
My practice's motto is that we represent unemployed workers, targets of government prosecution, the unpopular, the marginalized and the damned - proudly. I don't drive a Mercedes; I drive a Toyota with 92K miles and no A/C in this fucking heat wave. I charge rates that welders and nurses and electricians and teamsters can afford in the real world. That means that I live more modestly, but that's good because when you don't earn too much you stay smarter and live more reasonably.
Very few lawyers represent unemployed workers in benefits hearings. You cannot find TV ads for them, at least not in Maryland. If you get hurt on the job, worker's comp lawyers abound. If you get fucked over on the job and get fired, few lawyers will speak for you. The money in helping the faces at the bottom of the economic well isn't great, though it's a good education and is therapeutic for a lawyer who may be tempted to lose his or her way. The lack of attorneys to fight for workers whose skill is in their backs, their hands, their fingers and their feet and not always their quick wit or analogical reasoning powers damages those workers. When fired, they don't know where to go or whom to hire, and neither do most attorneys whom they know. I know of exactly one full-time Maryland labor attorney who does more unemployment work than I do, and he has my maximum respect. Without lawyers, workers don't appeal bad cases very often; management has plenty of lawyers, of course.
As an unemployment lawyer you don't get to sleep much, but when you do you sleep the sleep of the just. Sleeping well knowing you are fighting the good fight in these miserable economic times helps take the sting out of tough losses. Fighting against management stooges and careerist hacks, condescending HR pricks in pink ties and asshole overpaid anti-union attorneys is good for your soul, probably fights cholesterol. I feel lucky to get to fight the good fight, especially in the luxury of an air-conditioned office.
Do not forget the faces at the bottom of the economic well; do not forget that they have faces. For too long I let myself do so.