The doctors note said little more than (I’m paraphrasing) $employee can return to work as they have recovered from the disability. X, y, and z would still be beneficial to $employee whenever possible.
That last bit was mostly about doing whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again, and little more than a suggestion for the exact kind of environment you should find in an office.
If someone were to give it 30s of analysis, it basically reads that I’m good to go and I can work in a normal office environment.
I am disabled. I have an executive function disorder. I have been working on it and continue to work on it with several healthcare professionals so that I can function normally (as expected) relative to everyone else. I take on the responsibility of making sure I can keep up with everyone and little, if any, burden put on others to make accommodations for me. My doctor knows this and worded the note accordingly.
I understand that you wish to just get on with it, And I am very impressed with your attitude even with your issues. However you cannot think of yourself as a burden to make accomedations for. I’m NAL(Not a lawyer) but here in England it would be descriminatory not to make concessions and to judge you based on that. Even if they kicked you off and you just want to get on with it, you still need compensation for unfair dismissal. Which is the time you spend without work unexpectedly due to their discriminatory practices.
I want to update you specifically. I have a friend who is a paralegal, whom I have been speaking to throughout this matter, and through the course of our discussions I noted that in my department there has been three people, myself and two others prior to disability, for a bit during my disability there would have been two people in the department. However, I recently had just cause to return to the office to retrieve something that cannot be out of my possession, and excluding me, there were and currently are, three people in my department, there was a new person hired during my absence.
They rightly pointed out that it appears as though I was replaced.
I will be discussing this further with an attorney. I don’t want to say any more than this until after all matters have been legally resolved. What I will say, is that to my understanding of the laws here, and the understanding that my friend has, it is not legal to dismiss an employee without appropriate compensation, while they are away on leave, whether medical, disability or otherwise.
I have taken steps to retain council on this already. Thank you for your advice. I appreciate you very much.
I have a friend who is a paralegal, and while her opinion does not constitute legal advice, she thinks I should talk to an employment lawyer as well… I’m seriously considering it, but at the moment I’m biding my time a little bit as I still have personal effects at the workplace that I would like to recover before pursuing any action that could sour the relationship between that employer and me (from their perspective) any more than it may already be soured.
I resisted the urge to make the comment “laying someone off after they recover from a disability? That’s awfully brave of you.”
I don’t think that would have gone over particularly well with them. Needless to say, my first priorities are to find reliable employment and recover my belongings. I’ll consider it further when that is accomplished. Lucky for me, I had previously been given the name of someone who is exactly this kind of lawyer by someone I worked with. Let me paraphrase them by saying, it’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last.
I feel like it’s unfortunate since I actually liked the people I worked with. I didn’t care for management, but bluntly, most management rubs me the wrong way, so no love lost there… But they had some really great people working there that I genuinely enjoyed working with. Oh well. Life goes on.
If in the US, generally that would be an FMLA issue. But given the size of the company, FMLA doesn’t apply. As I recall, it only applies to companies bigger than 25 or 50 employees. I used to work for a small MSP, and we had about 20 employees. I had no guarantee of any parental leave when my kid was born, so I had to work remotely and take PTO to cover my time off. It was not how I wanted it to go.
I’m in Canada, and with the exception of some healthcare and related things (like parental leave), we’re very similar in employment laws at a high level. I still plan to inquire about it with an attorney, but I’m not exactly hopeful that will result in something.
Speaking to some people who know the system better than I do, locally, they’ve informed me that our government employment insurance system (which has been covering me financially since I became “disabled”, may launch an inquiry, since it’s very legally dubious that a company doesn’t take back a worker after a disability)… based on the results of that inquiry, I may have legal options… that’s a lot of if’s, and relying on others to do their jobs and results of these things being in my favor. At present, I’m apt to leave it be, but I will pursue it if advisors say otherwise. I will be seeking official legal advice on the matter at some point in the near future. I can’t and won’t promise any specific action because I don’t have all the information required for the matter; in my mind it could go either way. what I can promise is that I’ll be looking into it. I don’t know that I will update anything in any meaningful way to relay the results here, but it will be examined as an option.
What’s important to note, is that this is a layoff. A layoff is different than firing (termination of employment), you still don’t have a job at the end of the day, but a layoff is more along the lines of “we are currently unable to fulfill the requirements of employing you”, which opens the option of employment later if the conditions change on the companies side of things. I’m still unemployed at the moment, so I’ll see what happens, I don’t officially come off disability until the end of the month, and I don’t report that to employment insurance for a few weeks yet; but I may give them a call on Monday just to inform them of the change, which may accelerate the process. Regardless, I don’t want to force them to employ me, since that’s usually a recipe to have them seek out any/all infractions and reprimand me whenever possible to justify firing me with cause, which would be worse for me overall; EI here only covers job loss where there is no fault of your own contributing to the loss. If you are fired with cause, then you’re on your own. While EI doesn’t provide enough income to sustain myself properly, it’s something, which is more than nothing.