Hilmar Cheese fired injured employee, blocked unemployment pay, attorney says in lawsuit
A factory worker at Hilmar Cheese who was hurt at his workplace has filed a lawsuit saying the company violated his workers rights by effectively severing him from his job, and then blocking his access to unemployment benefits, according to a complaint filed in Merced County Superior Court.
Hilmar Cheese Company in northwest Merced County declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, according to a spokesperson.
Victor Cruz of Delhi worked at Hilmar Cheese, a huge cheese producer with 1,500 employees and a revenue of $2.8 billion, for about 15 years before a back injury he suffered as a factory operator led him to need three months off, his complaint says.
A doctor told the 37-year-old during a routine follow-up exam he’d need some more time off, which amounted to nine more working days, the lawsuit says. After those additional days, his doctor cleared him to work without accommodation.
That’s when the company veered away from its requirements under workers rights law, according to Cruz’s attorney Michael Kent. “They screwed up this whole thing,” he said.
Hilmar Cheese moved Cruz from the Family and Medical Leave Act designation to a Medical Leave of Absence designation, the lawsuit says.
The cheese maker’s policy provides no job protection to those on MLOA, Kent said, adding the company’s policy is a unlawful and discriminatory.
Kent said the company is required by law to make the process interactive, which is to say to meet with the employee to learn if they can be accommodated. That never happened, the lawsuit says.
“By failing to engage in the interactive process at the appropriate time, they then also fail to accommodate the employees, which allows for them — not legally but illegally — to terminate employees and reassign employees,” he said.
The policy dates back to at least 2007, he said. Given the policy is at least 15 years old, he said there’s potential for other employees to have run up against it, adding administrative employees who have been deposed for the ongoing lawsuit could testify at trial.
“Hilmar (Cheese) has been discriminating against individuals who need medical accommodations since 2007, and have implemented a policy to essentially systematically reassign and remove these employees,” he said.
Cruz attempted to come back to work only to be told his position had been filled, another violation of employment law, Kent said. Cruz should have also been given preferential treatment under the law to apply for another position in which he qualified, which he tried to do three times.
Kent said there were positions available, but Cruz was not moved to the front of the line like the law requires.
Compounding the issues for Cruz, Kent said, was the company reported to the Employment Development Department that the injured employee had left on his own, making him ineligible for unemployment pay once he applied.
Cruz has three children to support and has recently begun the process to adopt two children in his foster care, Kent said.
Not having a job and not being able to collect unemployment benefits has been hard on the family, according to another attorney for Cruz, Emily Pincin.
“It was really an instance of the company taking advantage of these employees, when they’re at their most vulnerable or in a state where they really need an employer’s support, and they’re just not getting that,” she said.
The lawsuit seeks damages of more than $25,000, which would be determined by a jury. The next hearing in the case is in August, according to Merced County Superior Court records.
