Any help is appreciated

[grayson88]

Michigan

I have worked for a small business for a month or two now and today I received a phone call from my GM telling me that I have been suspended. This is supposedly because I have had a "bad attitude" for the last week or so.

The first incident stems from asking one of my coworkers to do her job, she had been attempting to get other people to do her work for her and I told her no when she came to me and she threw a fit.

The second is from a cook (happens to be a friend of the afore mentioned coworker) who said "F**k You" to my face in front of the night manager and nearly a dozen other people. When I brought this up the GM said he had never been informed of this even though the cook was bragging about it still the next day. I complained to the managers and now I'm being suspended.

I realize that as this is a right to work state, they can fire me for no reason, my question is if their is a step I can take legally?

 

[cbg]

If your suspension lasts for more than a week, you can legally file for unemployment.

Other than that, no. There is no law you can invoke that will force them to lift the suspension, and since you can legally be suspended for wearing (or not wearing) green socks there is also no lawsuit you can file.

FYI, right to work means that you do not have to join a union to get work. It has nothing to do with your situation. You are talking about at-will employment, which is the case in 49 out of 50 states and sometimes in the 50th. In your case, it would also apply in the 50th state.

 

[Chyvan]

If your suspension lasts for more than a week, you can legally file for unemployment.

This isn't entirely accurate. Seeing as how it's Monday, and you're suspended (and I'm assuming without pay), you can and should file unemployment before close of business this coming Friday. If you wait until a full week and do it next Monday, then you'll just ended up getting cheated out of the waiting-week credit that you could have gotten for this week assuming that you'll earn less then you'd have gotten under MI's partial benefit formula.

In preparation for that possibility, start documenting your work search so that you'll have all the right answers when you file your weekly claim.

 

[cbg]

I don't believe I told him to wait until next week. If he is still suspended by Friday, that is a full work week, assuming that he works the traditional work week.

 

[grayson88]

So there is nothing I can do, I am allowed to be verbally attacked in the workplace and nothing happens? Except the highly likely scenario that I will be fired when this "suspension" ends.

 

[cbg]

That's it exactly.

Go back and read about at-will employment again.

 

[commentator]

It matters not one iota when during this suspension this person files the unemployment claim which is the only answer to his "what can I do?" question.

He can file any day this week during his suspension, it will set up or attempt to set up a monetary claim, which means they'll pull in all the wages from the places he's been working in the last two years roughly. If this is enough wages from covered employers, then he'll have a monetary claim of so many weeks at so much a week.

After that, they begin looking at the reason you are no longer working for the employer. Getting a decision on this aspect of the claim will take four to six weeks if not longer. To draw unemployment it has to be that you are unemployed "through no fault of your own." If you are terminated without a valid misconduct reason, if you were given no opportunity to change your behavior and keep your job, if you were doing the job to the best of your abilities, and particularly if you'd had no previous warnings that you weren't pleasing the employer, then you have a pretty good likelihood of being approved for benefits even though you are terminated.

If you file the claim, they'll tell you that you must certify for weeks after they pass. If you have been out of work the whole week, or several days in the week when the time to certify comes around, usually the first Sunday or Monday after the week the claim is filed, you'll be looking back at the previous week, you'll make a weekly certification for that week. You'll not be paid anything, because the claim hasn't been approved, but then later if your claim is approved, you'd be back paid for any weeks you'd certified for since you filed the claim except of course that waiting week.

But since, as you say, you probably are fired as well as suspended, I'd go on and file the claim sometime soon. Then wait and see. It doesn't hurt to make a few job searches in the meantime, too. If they call you back to work, fine. You can go. But it wouldn't hurt to have filed the claim and have it set up.

Because yes, you very likely are fired, though they'll leave you dangling on suspension as long as they think they can get away with it without saying you're fired, and its perfectly legal for them to do so. It doesn't sound as though you have worked at this place too long. They are exercising their right to get rid of a possible problem employee before he becomes a problem. They certainly can do this, quite legally.

Read the other posts here. If you want, you can always do what another poster says she's doing, and get a consult with an attorney and have them tell you the same thing. But most people do not understand how few rights they have in the workplace until it happens to them.