The supervisor failed to take this corrective action into account on the rate and rank form despite being required to do so. Unlike the plaintiff, the younger employee was subject to a formal performance improvement plan for his poor performance. If the supervisor had not assigned the plaintiff a score of "developing" in 2013, she would have received the same score as that younger employee. However, unlike the plaintiff, that employee had not taken FMLA leave in 2013. The younger employee had received an unsatisfactory rating in 2013. The plaintiff and an employee who was 12 years younger had the two lowest scores on the rate and rank. The plaintiff's immediate supervisor then allegedly contrived a rate and rank that justified his decision to fire her. Instead, they purportedly spoke by telephone and verbally agreed to select the plaintiff for termination. The two managers, however, allegedly did not engage in the formal rate and rank process to make their termination decision. The rate and rank protocol required managers to evaluate the performance of their team members during the previous two years. They were asked to "rate and rank" their team members before determining whom to terminate. In March 2015, Verizon instructed the supervisor and another manager to select one person to terminate as part of a reduction in force. Nevertheless, the supervisor expected his turf engineers to function as project managers and use contractors to get more work done, according to the court. In the review, her supervisor complimented the plaintiff's growth in the turf engineer role but criticized her delegation of work to contractors. In her 2014 year-end review, she received a satisfactory rating. Her score was 10.3, which was better than the district average score of 18.2.īy year-end, she had reduced her fac verification score to 8.4, which was better than the team average of 12.7. This was the most important aspect of her job as a turf engineer. In that position, the plaintiff obtained a "fac verification" score that measured the speed with which she completed her high-bandwidth jobs. In April 2014, the plaintiff's supervisor transferred her to the position of turf engineer. In her 2013 midyear review, her supervisor wrote that the plaintiff "has missed time due to an injury" and gave her a less-than-satisfactory rating of "developing" in the review. When she returned, she worked only half days through September 2013. While serving as a conduit highway engineering specialist in 2013, she took approximately 2.5 months of FMLA leave. The plaintiff, a 56-year-old member of the design engineering team, had worked for Verizon for 36 years when she was laid off in 2015. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held. A female engineer presented sufficient proof of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) retaliation and age discrimination in her firing by Verizon to support a $454,000 verdict, plus a $165,000 award of interest, attorney fees and costs, the U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |