Company Denied Woman Coronavirus Sick Leave, Then Fired Her: Lawsuit
An embroiderer in Florida is suing her former employer, alleging it did not provide her with paid sick days while she quarantined at home with COVID-19 symptoms and then fired her via text message the day before she was to return to work.
The suit, filed Tuesday by Tracey Graham against Barrier Technologies, appears to be the first over the sick leave provisions in the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, one of the stimulus bills passed in March to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the new law, employers with fewer than 500 workers are required to provide up to 80 hours of paid sick time to anyone diagnosed with COVID-19 or under doctor’s orders to quarantine or isolate because of the disease.
That should have applied to Barrier Technologies, a small manufacturer in Davies, Florida, with around 26 employees. The company makes gear like vests, gloves and aprons that protect medical workers from radiation from X-rays and other machines. Graham was paid $14 an hour to embroider company logos and other things onto the gear. On its website, Barrier says it is COVID-19 “compliant” because the material it uses to make gear is made of an antibacterial fabric that is easy to disinfect.
After Graham left work sick, she consulted a doctor via telemedicine, according to the suit. She doesn’t have a car, so she wasn’t able to physically be tested for the disease. But the doctor told her to stay home for at least seven days, according to the suit.
Graham forwarded the doctor’s letter to Barrier’s general email address and received an acknowledgment from Barrier’s vice president of sales, the lawsuit alleges. But the company did not offer to pay sick leave and did not want to bring her back to work, she says. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in southern Florida, Graham says that the company owes her sick pay for the time she was at home and that her firing was unlawful.
“They recruit her and the minute she happens to fall...
