FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 12, 2014
Contact: Greta Bergstrom, 651.336.6722, greta@takeactionminnesota.org
Communications Workers of America Say AT&T Out of Compliance with New Minnesota State Law Extending Sick Leave Benefits to Care of Relatives
Minneapolis, MN — Over the lunch hour Wednesday, a large crowd including over fifty members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), rallied outside the AT&T Tower in downtown Minneapolis calling on the corporation to stop denying sick leave benefits to its longest-serving employees. Over ten senior-tenured AT&T employees have been denied compensation for sick time used to care for relatives including spouses and parents, a benefit now mandated by Minnesota state law under statute 181.9413.
“It’s time for AT&T to stop avoiding its legal obligations to its longtime employees, people who have helped build this company over decades,” said Susan Anderson, a thirty-four-year employee of the company who has been denied payment of sick leave benefits while caring for her husband as he was undergoing treatments for prostate cancer. “AT&T has refused to pay me for the time they owe, and that’s wrong.”
In August 2013, the Minnesota state legislature enacted Minnesota statute 181.9413, extending personal sick leave benefits so employees with these benefits could use their paid time off to care for an extended array of relatives including a sibling, parent, spouse or parent-in-law. The law allows for no less than 160 hours in any twelve-month period with employers also allowed to offer additional time at their own choosing.
In June 2014, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry issued a letter to AT&T instructing the corporation to comply with the new state statute. Since that date, AT&T has ignored the order and continued denying benefits to their most senior employees. As a result, many employees who have worked with AT&T for over twenty-five years have been denied the pay the law allows for while caring for ill or injured relatives, or have been forced to use vacation time or non-paid time to provide care. Other long-time employees struggle to find family or friends to provide the care rather than having to fight with AT&T management over compensation.
Deb Derke of Bloomington has used earned sick leave to care for her husband after he suffered a heart attack and a stroke but has yet to be paid for this time, as law stipulates. “My husband is paralyzed and in a wheelchair most of the time. I had to take a lot of time off to care for him, while worrying about keeping my income coming in and my family cared for. Minnesota state law says I should be compensated for this, and the Minnesota Department of Labor has directed AT&T to comply but so far, they haven’t.”
Derke said the law went into effect in August 2013 but AT&T did not even acknowledge it until January 2014. And for the past eleven months, AT&T has refused to comply with the law where its senior employees are concerned, refusing compensation for time used.
Don Waalen-Radzevicius of Minneapolis, who has worked with AT&T for over twenty-eight years said AT&T’s non-compliance is hurting far more than those employees who have tried to collect the sick leave compensation they have earned and used. “There are at least one-hundred employees who have twenty-five or more years of service to AT&T. When seeing the new HR standards showing sick-leave benefits for care of relatives being ‘non-applicable’ to those in the twenty-five year bracket, many have been using up vacation time instead. This is a massive problem and AT&T needs to take corrective action immediately.”
Following the rally, the crowd marched over to the IDS Center to hand-deliver a letter to the offices of Littler Mendelson, P.C. who is legally advising AT&T. The letter asks that the law firm “advise your client, AT&T, to correctly apply MN Statute 181.9413 Care of Relative, in the spirit in which the law was enacted and not in the incorrect and unlawful manner in which (AT&T) has been applying the statute.”
# # #
