Court Opinion

ID: 9689915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:49:35.218117+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:52.760368
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(concurring specially).
Although I concur with the conclusion that the employee did not refuse an unequivocal offer of suitable employment, I am of the opinion that Hormel’s letter of January 4, 1986 amounted to a bona fide offer of employment, which required some response on the employee's part. It is Hormel’s failure to reply to the employee’s inquiry about the nature of the job offered, not the failure of the original offer, which justifies the imposition of liability for compensation benefits in the event the employee’s disability curtailed his ability to secure employment.
For several years prior to the strike which began on August 17, 1985, Hormel had designated certain light duty jobs for assignment to injured workers by a rehabilitation committee composed of union and management representatives. For more than four years, from April 1980 to August 17, 1985, employee was assigned to various light duty or rehabilitation jobs without any wage loss. The compensation judge found as fact that on August 17, 1985 employee voluntarily stopped working and went on strike with his fellow employees. The employee was not then receiving any treatment for his work-related injury; neither was he experiencing any symptoms related to that injury.
The strike had been in progress about four and one-half months when the employer notified employee and the other striking employees by the letter of January 4, 1986, that the plant would reopen on January 13, 1986, and that all employees could return to work. The opening paragraph advises the employee that the plant is to be reopened:
On January 13, 1986, your Company will open up the Austin Plant. The strike by Local P-9 has now dragged on for over 20 weeks. The time has come to reopen the plant and make work available for those who want to work. The decision to reopen the plant was a difficult one. It was made in light of the recent Mediator’s and International Union’s unsuccessful attempts to resolve the labor dispute in Austin. * * * *
*17The second paragraph, quoted only in part in the majority opinion, described the procedure by which employees would be returned to work:
Many employees have asked us what procedure will be followed when we reopen the plant. The procedure is this. Simply, return the enclosed form to the Company in the self-addressed envelope that is enclosed for your convenience. Please do this as soon as possible and report for work at the plant on January 13, 1986. We will process the return to work forms and put returning employees to work immediately on the jobs that are available during start-up operations. The decision to strike was yours, and the decision to return to work is also yours, and yours alone. The Company is not telling you what to do in that regard. We are merely stating that a job is available to you depending upon the positions that are open as the plant resumes production. We will make every effort to accommodate as many returning employees as possible.
The letter closed with these words:
As we have said many times, the Austin Plant was not built to set [sic] idle. We are committed to running this plant. We want you to be a part of that operation.
It seems to me that by this letter the employer has communicated to any reasonable reader a good faith offer to resume employment. That the letter is nonspecific about particular job openings, their number, and the exact dates on which particular positions will be available casts no doubt on the bona fides of the job offer; it merely reflects the circumstances in which the letter was written. The labor dispute which had precipitated the closing of the plant had not yet been resolved. The employer did not know how many employees would accept the offer to resume employment nor what skills and experience the returning workers would possess. Neither could Hormel anticipate how many partially disabled employees would return to work or the nature of the returnees’ disabilities. Because of many inquiries regarding the recall, a second letter, dated January 7, 1986, advised employees of a hotline for questions regarding recall procedures and union status. Given the existence of the strike, the fact that the partially disabled employees had ceased working for reasons unrelated to their injuries, and Hormel’s track record with respect to the placement of injured workers — all undisputed facts— the compensation judge’s finding of fact that the employer’s letter informed the striking employees that the employer would find work for employees who returned on January 13, 1986, is in my opinion unassailable. Accordingly, I would hold that the January 4th letter communicated a good faith offer of employment and would hold any employee who is partially disabled as a result of a compensable injury to an obligation not unlike that required of any able-bodied worker: that the employee respond to the employer’s offer by signifying a willingness to return to work whenever a suitable job is available.
Relying on Johnson v. State Department of Veterans Affairs, 400 N.W.2d 729 (Minn.1987), the majority, like the WCCA, confines its analysis to the January 4th letter itself and declares that a general letter recalling employees to work does not amount to a valid job offer to which a disabled employee was obliged to respond. Certainly, the letter does not offer Thomas Fielding, or any other employee, a specific job tailored to meet his physical limitations, his particular skills, or his other qualifications. But no letter is written or read in a vacuum, as the Johnson case aptly illustrates. Following a work-related back injury, employee Johnson was placed on a modified job status as a nurse’s aide. Johnson quit after an argument with her supervisor over the assignment of an additional task. Later the employee wrote to the employer requesting that she be permitted to return to work in a light duty capacity that would accommodate her back disability. By letter the employer replied that if Johnson wished to be considered for employment again, she should request that her name be placed on the reemployment list for the position of nurse’s aide. The employer conceded that the letter was not even intended as an offer of employment, much less an offer of work the employee could do in her partially disabled condition. Id. at 731.
*18The fact which distinguishes the present case from Johnson and justifies the imposition of a duty to respond in the one case and not in the other is a fact extraneous to the letter itself: the identity of the initiator of the dialogue. While the employee had in both cases voluntarily left the job, employee Johnson had asked to return to work at a job she could do. The employer did not respond with a genuine and unequivocal offer of suitable work, so the employee had no obligation to accept a non-offer. The Hormel letter, on the other hand, advised striking employees that, despite the on-going labor dispute, it was making work available to those who wished to return to work. That the letter was a bona fide offer of employment requiring response is borne out by the fact that all employees who reported were put to work — including the 44 partially disabled employees who were given light duty jobs.
Moreover, the employee himself recognized both the bona fides of the offer and the necessity of a response, for he asked what job within his restrictions was available to him. The employer did not answer. Regardless of the ambivalence and the unenthusiastic tenor of the employee’s inquiry, if the employer wanted to shield itself from the obligation to pay disability compensation on the ground that the injured worker refused an offer of suitable employment, the employer was then obliged to make a genuine and unequivocal offer of work the employee could do in his physical condition. Johnson, 400 N.W.2d at 732. It is the failure to reply to employee’s inquiry, not the generality of the recall letter, which causes me to concur in the result.