Court Opinion

ID: 9712958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:03:50.503131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:15.462233
License: Public Domain

*141PETERSON, Justice
(dissenting).
Relator employee requested and received permission from her employer to take a Friday off for her grandfather’s funeral. But the funeral was not on Friday. The funeral was on Saturday, Friday having been requested for the undisclosed purpose of house cleaning for guests attending a wake on Friday evening. Relator was discharged for her deception.
Reversing the findings and conclusions of all three levels of administrative adjudication, the majority concludes there was no statutory misconduct, based upon its own independent finding that “the employee’s conduct evinced a good-faith error in judgment in an isolated instance” that “did not adversely affect the employer’s business.”
I dissent from this extraordinary result. It has been well settled, until today, that the final administrative decision, that of ■the Commissioner of Economic Security, will not be disturbed where there is reasonable evidence tending to support it. Booker v. Transport Clearings of Twin Cities, Inc., 260 N.W.2d 181, 183 (Minn.1977). The test of whether activity constitutes misconduct for purposes of disqualification from unemployment compensation benefits, as we said in Booker, is whether the activity is in willful disregard of an employer’s interest, the “disregard of standards of behavior which an employer has a right to expect of an employee.” Id. See also Semanko v. Dept. of Employment Services, 309 Minn. 425, 244 N.W.2d 663 (1976); Nyberg v. R.N. Cardozo & Brother, Inc., 243 Minn. 361, 67 N.W.2d 821 (1954).
The majority opinion appears now to adopt the views of the sole dissenting justice in Auger v. Gillette Co., 303 N.W.2d 255 (Minn.1981), where a denial of unemployment compensation benefits was affirmed in a situation where unsupervised night janitors were discovered sleeping in the locker room on the employer’s premises during working hours. There, the majority said:
Under the circumstances of this case, the employer had a clear and substantial interest in maintaining a responsible, self-disciplined work environment. Employees’ sleeping on the job was in willful disregard of this interest. While a warning given to employees would have strengthened employer’s proof, it was not essential in the circumstances of this case in order to demonstrate that both employees had acted in willful disregard of the employer’s interests.
303 N.W.2d at 257. The dissenting justice, writing for the majority in today’s case, said, there as here, that there was “not the substantial evidence which warrants a finding of misconduct,” and reasoned that “[tjhere is no indication in the record that their work had been anything but satisfactory or that there had ever been any previous complaint, warning, censure or misconduct” and that “[bjoth were terminated from their employment for one incident of sleeping on the job.” 303 N.W.2d at 258.
Here, the commissioner found as fact that there was deception rather than “misunderstanding and lack of communication” on the part of relator. These are the dis-positive findings of the appeals tribunal as confirmed by the commissioner:
On November 7, 1982 the claimant was discharged from this employment because she had misrepresented the reason for requesting the day off from work on November 5, 1982. The claimant had been warned in the past that it was important that she be honest with her employer in regard to her job performance.
On November 4, 1982 the claimant called and informed the above-named employer that it was necessary that she have the day off on November 5, 1982 to attend her grandfather’s funeral. The manager agreed to excuse her for that day and for that reason.
Discussing the reasons for its decision, the appeals tribunal said:
The evidence supports a finding that the claimant intentionally deceived her manager in order to take a day off to clean her house and prepare for a wake. The claimant in the past had been warned that she must be completely honest with her employer or risk dismissal.
*142Given the supported findings of fact in the administrative adjudication, where issues of credibility of witnesses are resolved, I cannot accept the notion that deliberate deception so directly affecting the obligations of employment does not constitute statutory misconduct. I would affirm the determination of the Commissioner of Employment Security.