Court Opinion

ID: 9773921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:03:59.685227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:06.753429
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
¶ 8. dissenting. The majority’s decision today requires an em*580ployee with good cause to leave her employment to jump through an unreasonable and futile hoop to maintain eligibility for unemployment compensation benefits. In doing so, the majority undercuts the legislative purpose behind our unemployment compensation and wage and hour laws — laws that are meant to protect workers from exploitative and unfair working conditions. Because I cannot agree that an employee’s reasonable refusal to attend what can only be described as a futile meeting bars an otherwise valid claim to unemployment compensation, I respectfully dissent.
¶ 9. Claimant began working for the Stay and Play Day Care Center as a preschool teacher in the spring of 2008. Beginning sometime in November 2008, the daycare began losing students, and cash flow became a serious problem. In late January 2009, claimant was given an employment review, following which claimant’s title of director was eliminated (claimant’s employment duties, however, remained the same), her hourly pay was reduced from $12.75 to $10.50, and her vacation days were reduced. The pay cut was chiefly a result of the daycare’s financial troubles. Claimant continued to work at the daycare center for the next two months, although the relationship between claimant and the employer became increasingly strained. On March 21, the employer informed claimant, through a text message, that she would be required to attend a training session for the Head Start program, which was scheduled for the evening of March 26 after regular work hours. Claimant refused after the employer told her she would not be paid for the hours spent attending the training. Claimant and employer spoke, again largely through text messaging, of having a face-to-face meeting to discuss their problems. The text messages, however, quickly became contentious, and at one point the employer described the proposed meeting as a “show down.” Claimant refused to attend the proposed meeting without a third party present, but the employer would not acquiesce to this request. Claimant sent a text message to the employer on March 24 resigning her position and subsequently applied for unemployment compensation benefits, the denial of which is the subject of this appeal.
¶ 10. The crux of the Board’s decision to deny benefits here rests on its conclusion that, despite the legitimate reason claimant had for leaving, the fact that she failed to attend a filial meeting with the employer foreclosed her eligibility for unemployment compensation benefits. The Board’s narrow analysis effectively converts the requirement that a claimant make some effort to remedy the work situation — what is essentially a notice requirement to ensure that an employer is aware of the grievance and has an opportunity to rectify it — into a futile and unreasonable hurdle to unemployment benefits. Even under the deferential standard of review owed to the Board’s conclusions, the established facts — particularly the deterioration of the employment relationship preceding the final dispute over unpaid training and the employer’s characterization of the proposed meeting to discuss the dispute as a “show down” — do not support the result reached by the Board and “compel a different result as a matter of law.” Burke v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 141 Vt. 582, 584, 450 A.2d 1156, 1157 (1982) (quotations omitted).
¶ 11. Though we have required that an employee make “some effort to remedy alleged poor working conditions or else demonstrate that such effort would be unavailing,” Rushlow v. Dep’t of Employment & Training, 144 Vt. 328, 331, 476 A.2d 139, 141 (1984), we have also noted that an employee should not be penalized for making an effort to resolve a dispute and that the focus of our inquiry “must be *581primarily on the conduct of the employer.” Skudlarek v. Dep’t of Employment & Training, 160 Vt. 277, 282, 627 A.2d 340, 343 (1993). Indeed, the very purpose of this “some effort to remedy” requirement is to put an employer on adequate notice of the grievance so that he or she has an opportunity to rectify the problem. In Garcia v. Department of Employment & Training, for instance, we affirmed the Board’s conclusion that the claimant’s access to unemployment benefits was not barred because he had not made a reasonable effort to inform his employer of his grievance. 145 Vt. 331, 337, 488 A.2d 762, 766 (1985). We noted that the claimant had expressly told his employer about his complaint and that his efforts distinguished his case “from those involving a claimant’s failure to contact the employer prior to quitting.” Id.; accord Colduvell v. Unemployment Comp. Bd. of Review, 408 A.2d 1207, 1208 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 1979) (although good cause existed, where claimant did not give owners “opportunity to understand the nature of her objection, before resigning,” she did not satisfy legal requirement of reasonable attempt to stay on the job).
¶ 12. Here, the employer was unequivocally on notice of claimant’s grievance with regard to the unpaid training, an event which amounts to a breach of the employment contract (and possibly wage and hour laws, see 29 C.F.R. § 785.27) and thus would have provided good cause to quit. See Burke, 141 Vt. at 585, 450 A.2d at 1158 (concluding that an employer’s failure to pay consideration agreed upon for claimant’s service gave claimant good cause to leave “because his employer failed to keep its side of the bargain”); Allen v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 141 Vt. 132, 134, 444 A.2d 892, 893 (1982) (concluding good cause to leave existed following failure to provide promised training); Seymour v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 137 Vt. 79, 80, 399 A.2d 519, 520 (1979) (per curiam) (concluding good cause to leave existed following breach of agreement to provide transportation); Zablow v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 137 Vt. 8, 9, 398 A.2d 305, 306 (1979) (per curiam) (concluding that good cause to leave existed following repeated failure to pay wages when due); Shorey v. Dep’t of Employment Sec., 135 Vt. 414, 415, 377 A.2d 1389, 1390 (1977) (per curiam) (concluding that good cause to leave existed following failure to provide promised raise).
¶ 13. The discussion about the grievance, which occurred over a series of increasingly contentious text messages, had reached a stalemate. Indeed, the employer used the words “end of discussion” in her final text message on the subject and characterized the proposed meeting to discuss the dispute as a “show down.” These facts demonstrate that it was entirely reasonable for claimant to conclude that there was absolutely no chance that the meeting would resolve the underlying issue •— the employer’s refusal to pay claimant for the mandatory training — and that attendance at this “show down” would be futile. There is no indication that had claimant attended this meeting, the end result would have been any different. Instead, the Board’s conclusion that claimant’s failure to attend this meeting negates the employer’s breach of the employment contract puts claimant in the absurd position of having to jump through a futile and arbitrary hoop before she can access compensation to which she is otherwise entitled.
¶ 14. Further, the Board’s narrow “proximate cause” analysis — which ignores the fact that the requirement that claimant attend a mandatory training without pay was part of a larger breakdown in the employment relationship — not only fails to reflect our traditional broad construction of the unemployment compensation statute, but indeed fails to adequately reflect the reality and complexity of any employment relationship, a *582relationship which is rarely defined by one single event. Claimant’s employment relationship had been deteriorating for months preceding what the Board ultimately determined to be the proximate cause of claimant’s departure — the dispute over the unpaid mandatory training. Moreover, the previous pay cut, which as the Board conceded would have given claimant good cause to quit, was intimately related to what became the final blow — the request that claimant work without pay. Compare with Rushlow, 144 Vt. at 331, 476 A.2d at 141 (upholding Board’s finding that decision to quit was based on threat of reduction in hours rather than separate and unrelated event of refusal to drive unsafe truck). Indeed, the pay cut, loss of title, and loss of vacation days were events that the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) (and the Board through its adoption of the ALJ’s findings) characterized as “a substantial material change in . . . conditions of employment,” such that if claimant had quit immediately after these changes, she would have met her burden to demonstrate she had good cause to quit. But claimant did not quit; instead, she proceeded to make a good faith effort to ride out the financial difficulties of the daycare center. This effort, however, was met with what became the final insult in a deteriorating employment relationship: a requirement that claimant work without pay.
¶ 15. The Board’s conclusion that because claimant refused to sit down to yet another meeting with her employer about the most recent in a long line of disputes over essentially the same topic, she failed to meet her burden to attempt to work out her grievances, is simply not supported by the facts and is exactly the sort of “logically incoherent” decision we found thwarted the clear intent of our unemployment compensation law in Burke, 141 Vt. at 586, 450 A.2d at 1158. There, we found that an employee had good cause to quit where his employer allowed his medical benefits to lapse and then lied about reinstating the benefits even though “the employer might make it up tomorrow.” Id. at 587, 450 A.2d at 1158. In doing so, we overruled the Board’s decision, which concluded that because the employee had not been hurt by the lapse in coverage and because there was no reason for the employee not to believe the employer’s assurance that the benefits were reinstated, good cause to leave did not exist. Instead, we held that the Board’s refusal to find good cause in that situation put the employee in the “intolerable situation” of waiting for another lapse before he could quit. Id. at 586, 450 A.2d at 1158. Similarly, here, the Board’s decision places claimant in the same intolerable situation of enduring a series of adverse employment actions in the vain hope that the employer “might make it up tomorrow.” Id. at 587, 450 A.2d at 1158.
¶ 16. Time and again, we have held that in light of its remedial purpose, we should construe our unemployment compensation law broadly. The majority pays lip service to this basic principle, and then proceeds to credit the stringent test employed by the Board to determine whether good cause to leave exists, looking at the most recent adverse event in claimant’s employment history in total isolation, rather than as a pattern of disputed payment practices. By ignoring the three months following the pay cut, title loss, and vacation day reduction, in which employee made a good faith effort to ride out the daycare center’s period of economic hardship, the majority essentially penalizes claimant for this effort. Because I believe that claimant did have good cause to leave her employment, I would reverse the Board’s denial of unemployment benefits.
¶ 17. I am authorized to state that Justice Dooley joins this dissent.