Custom Packaging Manufacturer Justified in Terminating Worker on Belief Worker Violated Company’s Safety Absolutes Policy

During the process of manufacturing custom address labels, a North Carolina worker’s fingers were pulled in between a sheeting machine’s rollers when she placed her hand on the paper to see how much tension existed.  She sustained bruises to her hand that required her to go to the hospital.  The company’s printing department manager immediately investigated, found no defects with the machine, and determined that the employee had reached into moving equipment.  Nine days later, the plant manager told the worker she was terminated for violating one of the company’s “Safety Absolutes Policy,” which required immediate suspension or termination unless extraordinary circumstances existed whenever an absolute was violated.  One of the Safety Absolutes prevented “[r]eaching into moving equipment in violation of established safe operating procedures.”

The worker brought suit under North Carolina’s Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act alleging the company terminated her only after she started asking questions about workers’ compensation benefits.  The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina concluded that although the plaintiff made out a prima facie case (in light of the temporal proximity between her inquiries about workers’ compensation and her termination), her claim could not survive summary judgment because the company offered sufficient evidence that it would have terminated the worker even in the absence of a workers’ compensation claim.  The company, for example, introduced evidence that every employee who previously had violated the Safety Absolutes Policy had been terminated.  The court, however, based its ruling on the fact that the plaintiff had been unable to offer any evidence suggesting that the actual reason the company fired her was because the company considered her in violation of the Safety Absolutes Policy (regardless of whether her actions in fact were a violation of the policy).

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