Courthouse News Service – by LISA BUCHMEIER
MILWAUKEE (CN) – A medical staffing company blew off a court order, and its president told a pregnant employee to use an “Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force” so she could come back to work earlier, the woman claims in court.
The Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission sued HCS Medical Staffing, of Milwaukee, and its president, Charles Sisson, in Milwaukee County Court.
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who filed the complaint, says the defendants have not submitted a court-ordered compliance report, including how much it paid the employee for discriminating against her because she was pregnant.
The commission investigated HCS Medical Staffing after its employee Roxy Leger complained it had fired her because she was pregnant.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Equal Rights Division (DWD) agreed with Leger.
An administrative law judge found that the defendant Sisson had asked Leger if her pregnancy was “an April Fool’s joke.”
The judge also found that Sisson told Leger she would only need “two or three days off work for the pregnancy,” though Leger had requested 10 weeks of leave.
The judge found that Sisson showed Leger written materials for a patent describing an “Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force” and told her it was “great news,” because if she sued it she could come back to work earlier.
(The patent , which, to a layman, beggars belief, apparently was granted in 1965.)
Leger was fired two days after she gave birth, while she was still in the hospital.
The administrative law judge ordered Sisson and HCS Medical Staffing to cease and desist discriminating against Leger.
The judge ordered them to reinstate Leger, with back pay, and gave them 30 days to submit a Compliance Report, including the amount of back pay and describing how it complied with the order.
The defendants appealed the Department of Workforce Development order, but the Labor and Industry Review Commission affirmed the order and adopted the decision and order as its own.
The attorney general says the defendants have not “timely filed a Compliance Report and to date ha(ve) not filed a Compliance Report.”
The report was due on Feb. 8, 2013.
The state wants the defendants ordered to comply with the commission’s order, to submit the compliance report, and be fined $10 to $100 per day for each day the report has been late, since Dec. 10, 2012.
Obviously it takes at least one sick bastard to invent an “Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force”, but the fact that the patent was granted is the real head-spinner here.
I wouldn’t want to work in such a hostile environment. Yipes.