The trendy new lawsuit employers are getting slapped with

Regardless of what you think of lawyers on a personal level, you’ve got to admit: They’re a clever bunch. When they see a legal tactic that works, they ride it until the wheels fall off. 

The new lawsuit du jour workers are slapping employers with: defamation.

The Recorder, a news outlet for tech-focused legal professionals, spoke to employment lawyers in the Silicon Valley area and found that plaintiffs are starting to frequently add defamation claims to their wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuits against employers.

Example: L. Julias Turman, a partner at the firm Smith Reed LLP, told The Recorder that at least 60% of his wrongful termination and harassment cases include defamation claims.

And here’s the kicker: Turman said defamation claims are being tacked on to lawsuits whether they’re appropriate or not.

Reason: They give plaintiffs another avenue for — and increase their chances of — recovering money.

Defamation defined

According to The Recorder’s report, the defamation claims being filed against employers involve an ex-employees accusing their bosses — i.e., management — of providing false reasons for firing them.

In other words, terminated employees are trying to recover money for what they claim are statements or accusations made by their former employers that hurt their names — or personal brands — to the point that it would be difficult for them to find future employment.

An example of how a defamation claim could easily be tacked on to a harassment or discrimination lawsuit: Say a worker is claiming that he was fired for discriminatory reasons because he’s African American. And say the employer has stated that its reasoning for terminating him is because he was constantly late for work.

The worker can tack a defamation claim onto his discrimination lawsuit by alleging that the statements about his punctuality were false and were actually used as a pretext for firing him.

The attorneys interviewed by The Recorder said that this was always a course of action plaintiffs could take, but there’s a heavier focus on it now.

And that’s because it’s working. In a recent case highlighted by The Recorder, a worker terminated by Kemper Independence Insurance Co. had his wrongful termination and retaliation claims thrown out of court, but the man still managed to win a five-plus million dollar judgement because of his defamation claims.

That’s the type of result that makes attorneys stand up, take notice and find ways to tack defamation on to future suits.

The defense for employers

The good news: Employers aren’t powerless to defeat these claims — as long as they’ve got their documentation in order.

One attorney, Christopher Whelan, of Christopher H. Whelan Inc., whom The Recorder said has been described as “a guru in the field” of defamation, said proving a defamation claim isn’t easy for plaintiffs.

All an employer has to do, according to Whelan, to defeat one is prove that the alleged defamatory statement is true.

In other words, if you say a worker was chronically late, all you’d need are time and attendance records to back up that statement.

Taking things one step further, this means that you need ask yourself if you can back up, with hard evidence, that what you’re about to say about an employee is true — especially when what you’re about to say could hurt the person’s future employment prospects.

Spread the word to your managers.

Telecommuting ruling not all it’s cracked up to be for employers

A district court just ruled Ford Motor Co. was right to deny a disabled employee’s ADA accommodation request to telecommute. But don’t pop any corks in celebration of the ruling that said “… regularly attending work on-site is essential to most jobs … “ just yet.

While the ruling certainly is good news to employers who fear being dragged into court for denying a disabled worker’s request to work from home under the ADA, it’s far from a green light to deny such requests.

In fact, all this case does with any certainty — despite the seemingly one-sided ruling — is show just how hard it is to prove that on-site attendance is an essential function of someone’s job, which is the case you’ll have to make in court to show a worker’s accommodation request to telecommute is unreasonable.
Issues with her request

To fully understand why this ruling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, we have to go back to the beginning.

Jane Harris worked for Ford as a resale steel buyer. Her job was to act as the intermediary between steel suppliers and plants.

Harris also suffered from irritable bowel syndrome. Her symptoms caused her to repeatedly show up to work late, leave early and miss work entirely on many occasions. Her attendance issues got worse as time went on, and in the latter years of her employment, she consistently received low performance ratings and criticism.

Eventually, Harris claimed her condition made it impossible for her to drive or leave her desk without soiling herself. So she requested that she be allowed to work from home as many as four days per week.

Ford had a few problems with her request:

It said her job was “interactive,” in that it required her to have face-to-face contact with suppliers and plant officials to keep up relations — therefore, in-person attendance was an essential function of her job, the company claimed
Her job required computer work that couldn’t easily be completed remotely, and
She had already been granted the ability to work from home up to two days per week and her performance under that arrangement had been substandard.

So Ford denied her telecommuting request, and she was eventually terminated for performance issues.
EEOC sues

Harris took her case to the EEOC, which sued on her behalf, claiming Ford discriminated against her on the basis of her disability. The agency claimed Harris’ telecommuting request was reasonable and should’ve been granted.

Ford fought the suit and, originally, a district court sided with the automaker. It dismissed the EEOC’s case on summary judgment, ruling it shouldn’t go to trial.

But, on appeal, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit court reversed the decision and said her case should go to trial. It said that as technology has advanced, so have remote work arrangements. As a result, the court said, “… attendance at the workplace can no longer be assumed to mean attendance at the employer’s physical location.“

This ruling sent shock waves through the employer community, as it seemed to suggest that telecommuting would be a reasonable accommodation under most work arrangements.
Court rehears case

Shortly after the appeals court ruling, the full panel of Sixth Circuit judges agreed to vacate the decision and rehear the case en banc (meaning, in front of all the judges of the court).

In an 8-5 decision, the panel sided with Ford and dismissed the EEOC’s case on summary judgment.

It said Ford acted reasonably in denying Harris’ telecommuting request. While it acknowledged that there have been great advancements in technology, which could make telecommuting easier, those advancements didn’t prove that Harris’ job could be performed at home.

It said Harris only provided “unsupported testimony” that she could perform her job at home, and that wasn’t enough to create the “genuine dispute of fact” needed to send a case to trial.

The court also acknowledged that Harris’ poor performance ratings under the two-day telecommuting arrangement helped support Ford’s case that she couldn’t perform her job remotely.

But perhaps the most compelling statement the court made is this:

“We do not write on a clean slate. Much ink has been spilled establishing a general rule that, with few exceptions, ‘an employee who does not come to work cannot perform any of his job functions, essential or otherwise.’ … And for good reason: ‘most jobs require the kind of teamwork, personal interaction, and supervision that simply cannot be had in a home office situation.’”

“That general rule — that regularly attending work on-site is essential to most jobs, especially the interactive ones — aligns with the text of the ADA.”

Hold the celebration

That certainly seems to be a powerful statement — one that suggests it’ll now be easier for employers to make the argument that on-site attendance is an essential function of most jobs.

But pump the brakes.

There are two things employers should be careful not to overlook about this case:

This was by no means a slam dunk victory for Ford. An appeals court did rule that the EEOC’s case should proceed to trial, before the court’s full panel of judges swooped in to save the employer — and even then five judges dissented letting Ford win summary judgment, and
The EEOC has, time after time, demonstrated it doesn’t consider itself bound to past court decisions like this one. Translation: If it feels you’ve wronged a disabled individual, and it believes it can milk some cash out of you and make an example of you, it’ll sue.

Bottom line: It appears no matter the circumstance, it’s still going to be hard to prove that in-person attendance is an essential function of any job. So it’s going to be tough to defend denying disabled individuals the ability to telecommute on those grounds.
Steps employers should take

So if you’re an employer in Ford’s shoes — and want to be able to deny a person’s request to telecommute — what should you do?

The best advice we’ve come across is from labor and employment law attorney Eric. B. Meyer of the firm Dilworth Paxon LLP.

In his blog, The Employer Handbook, Meyer suggests employers:

Make sure your written job descriptions spell out when attendance is an essential function. Then provide copies of those descriptions to employees when they’re hired — and perhaps get employees to sign off on them.
Make sure managers understand and abide by the job descriptions. If a manager starts to let telecommuting slide, it’s going to be hard to prove in-office attendance is an essential function.
Analyze all accommodation requests on their own merits. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula to treating employees’ accommodation requests. You’ve got to enter the interactive process for each request — and keep the dialogue open with employees — in an attempt to seek out reasonable accommodations.

EEOC finally issues wellness rules: 8 things employers will want to know

It took a while, but employers finally have some sold guidance on how to design their wellness program incentives so they don’t violate the ADA.

The EEOC has been promising for a while now to issue rules to clear up the confusion it’s created around what kinds of wellness incentives are legal — and when non-participation penalties become so steep as to render a program “involuntary” and, thus, illegal under the ADA.

Well, the EEOC has finally kept its promise, and its new proposed rules outline, in its words, “how Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to employee wellness programs that are part of group health plans …” The regs will be published in the Federal Register on Monday.

But the EEOC did offer a sneak peek of the proposed rules on its website.
How we got in this mess

But before we get to them, here’s what got us to this point.

This past summer, the EEOC decided it was going to go after employer wellness programs it felt punished employees too harshly for not participating in wellness initiatives.

Example: In the first of three lawsuits the agency filed, it claimed Orion Energy Systems’ wellness program non-participation penalty for failing to complete a health risk assessment was so steep it rendered the program “involuntary.”

The ADA says a program can’t submit employees to medical inquiries that aren’t job-related and consistent with business necessity, unless those inquiries are part of a “voluntary” wellness program.

Orion charged employees who didn’t complete a health risk assessment their entire health plan premium, plus a $50 dollar non-participation penalty.

In the third lawsuit the EEOC filed, the one that’s gained the most prominence, it went after Honeywell International for slapping employees who didn’t submit to health screenings with a penalty worth roughly $4,000 in some cases. The EEOC felt this rendered Honeywell’s wellness program illegally “involuntary.”
Why this is such a mess

Employers have been complaining that by filing these lawsuits, the EEOC has overstepped its bounds.

Their argument: The EEOC hasn’t released any specific guidance as to what kinds of penalties would be so steep as to render a wellness program involuntary.

Some members of the GOP have even blasted the agency’s actions.

In some cases, employers and members of the GOP have said the EEOC’s actions fly in the face of the wellness regulations enacted by the Affordable Care Act, which state employers can offer wellness incentives/penalties as long as they don’t exceed 30% of the value of an individual’s insurance premiums (50% if the incentives are tied to smoking cessation).

In response to these allegations, the EEOC promised to issue regulations clearing the air on what kinds of wellness program incentives are legal once and for all.

What the proposed rules say

Employers that feared the new rules would be a tangled mess of confusing rules and exemptions (what federal law isn’t?) will likely be pleasantly surprised.

The rules appear to be pretty straightforward.

Here’s a rundown of the key points:

The proposed rule clarifies that the ADA allows employers to offer incentives up to 30% of the cost of employee-only coverage to employees who participate in a wellness program and/or for achieving health outcomes.
The rule also allows employers to impose penalties on employees who do not participate or achieve certain health outcomes. The maximum allowable penalty an employer can impose on employees is 30% of the total cost of employee-only coverage.
The total cost of coverage is the amount the employer and employee pay, not just the employee’s share of the cost. Example: If a group health plan’s total annual premium for employee-only coverage (including both employer and employee contributions towards coverage) is $5,000, the maximum allowable incentive an employer could offer to an employee in connection with a wellness program that includes disability-related questions (such as questions on a health risk assessment) and/or medical examinations is $1,500 (30% of $5,000).
Asking employees to complete a health risk assessment or have a biometric screening for the purpose of alerting them to health risks (such as having high cholesterol or elevated blood pressure) is acceptable under an employee health program (a.k.a., a wellness program).
Collecting and using aggregate information from employee assessments to design and offer programs aimed at specific conditions prevalent in the workplace (such as diabetes or hypertension) is also acceptable under a wellness program.
Asking employees to provide medical information (like that obtained through a health risk assessment) without providing any feedback about risk factors or without using aggregate information to design programs or treat any specific conditions would not be acceptable under a wellness program.
For a wellness program to be voluntary, it must not: A) require employees to participate, B) deny access to health coverage or generally limit coverage under its health plans for non-participation; and C) take any other adverse action or retaliate against, interfere with, coerce, intimidate, or threaten employees (such as by threatening to discipline an employee who does not participate or who fails to achieve certain health outcomes).
If a health program is considered a wellness program that is part of a group health plan, an employer must provide a notice clearly explaining what medical information will be obtained, how it will be used, who will receive it, and the restrictions on disclosure.

What’s next?

The public has until June 19, 2015 to comment on the proposed rules.

The EEOC will then evaluate all of the comments it receives and make revisions to the rules if deemed necessary. The agency will then vote on a final rule. After it’s approved, the final rule will be sent to the Office of Management and Budget and will be coordinated with other federal agencies before it is published in the Federal Register.

So it’ll likely be several months before the final rules are enacted.

It’s also unclear what effect, if any, the proposed rules will have on the wellness program lawsuits the agency’s filed against employers.

Reminder: The states are looking at your pay practices, too

Just a reminder: It’s not just the feds who are on the lookout for wage and hour violators — it’s state authorities, too.

Case in point: New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced settlements totaling $970,000 with four current Domino’s Pizza franchisees, who together own 29 stores across New York State, as well as with one former franchisee who owned six stores. The franchisees admitted to a number of labor violations, including minimum wage, overtime or other basic labor law protections, according to Schneiderman’s office.

The admitted violations varied by location and time period, and included the following:

Some stores paid delivery workers below the tipped minimum wage applicable to delivery workers under New York law.
Some stores failed to pay overtime to employees who worked over 40 hours in a week, and others under-paid overtime, because they did not combine all hours worked at multiple stores owned by the same franchisee, or because they used the wrong formula to calculate overtime for tipped workers, unlawfully reducing workers’ pay.
Delivery workers who used their own cars to make deliveries were not fully reimbursed for their job-related vehicle expenses.
Delivery workers who used their own bicycles to make deliveries were typically not reimbursed for any expenses related to maintaining their bicycles, nor were they provided with protective gear as required by New York City law.
Some stores violated a state requirement that employers must pay an additional hour at minimum wage when employees’ daily shifts are longer than 10 hours.
Some stores also violated a state requirement that employers must pay restaurant workers for at least three hours of work when those employees report to work for a longer shift but are ultimately sent home early because of slow business or other reasons.
Some stores took a “tip credit” without tracking tips, and assigned delivery workers to kitchen or other untipped work for more time than legally permitted. Employers may only take a “tip credit” and pay a lower minimum wage to tipped restaurant employees if those employees earn enough in tips and spend most of their time – at least 80 percent –performing tipped work.

Schneiderman’s been on Domino’s case for a while. The recent agreements follow settlements announced last year with six Domino’s pizza franchisees, who together owned 23 stores and agreed to pay a total of $448,000 in restitution.

Company’s shady-looking ‘RIF’ leads to $145K payout

Firing a disabled employee while he’s out on medical leave is usually a recipe for disaster. But it can be done in limited circumstances. However, the potentially discriminatory nature of this firing was a little too obvious for the EEOC to overlook. 

Meet Doug Johnson. He drove a van and took nursing home patients to medical appointments for his employer Paloma Blanca Health Care Associates, a health and rehabilitation center in Albuquerque, NM.

Almost three years into his tenure, Johnson suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with a number of other cardiovascular conditions.

He then requested a reasonable accommodation under the ADA in the form of a request for FMLA leave.

Paloma Blanca approved him for 12 weeks of FMLA leave.

So far so good, right?

Fired as part of an ‘RIF’

Five weeks into his medical leave things took a sharp turn.

Johnson was terminated.

Firing a person while on medical leave is enough to perk up the EEOC’s antenna. But Paloma Blanca didn’t stop there.

It notified Johnson that it had eliminated his position and was laying him off due to a “reduction in force.”

Granted, a legitimate RIF is actually one of the ways employers can terminate individuals on medical leave — assuming it could be proven those workers would’ve been let go regardless of their medical condition or leave of absence.

But problem for Paloma Blanca was this looked like anything but a legitimate RIF, at least according to the info contained in the EEOC’s press release on the matter.

No other Paloma Blanca employees were subjected to an RIF at that time, the EEOC said, and there were no department- or facility-wide reductions in force around that time either.

So the EEOC sued Paloma Blanca under the ADA for disability discrimination and for failing to provide reasonable accommodations to a disabled individual.

Perhaps seeing how bad this looked, Paloma Blanca decided to settle the lawsuit by providing Johnson $145,000 in monetary relief.

As part of the settlement, Paloma also agreed to:

  • expunge from Johnson’s personnel file any references to the allegations of discrimination, his participation in the lawsuit or his disabilities
  • review and distribute to employees its policies regarding disability discrimination and retaliation
  • provide its employees with training regarding disability discrimination and procedures for handling requests for reasonable accommodations, and
  • post a notice emphasizing the company’s equal employment opportunity policy and reaffirming its commitment to providing reasonable accommodations for employees and applicants with disabilities.

Don’t let temporary ADA accommodations turn into never-ending perks

When employers grant accommodation requests, those accommodations should always be made on a temporary basis. Unfortunately, many firms unknowingly turn these temporary accommodations into permanent ones.

Act early to prevent confusion

Ms. Galindo stressed the importance of making sure employers act early to prevent any confusion about the nature of the accommodation.

Here’s why that’s so important: Say an employee’s accommodation has been in place for a long period of time. The company decides the arrangement is no longer working out and tells the worker.

The worker then sues under the ADA, and the court sides with the employee. Its reason: The accommodation has been in place for this long without it impacting the company, so there’s no reason why it should all of sudden be an undue hardship.

In any communication about the reasonable accommodation during the interactive process and/or hardship analysis, it should be clearly stated that the accommodation is being made on a temporary basis.

From there, employers should revisit the accommodation regularly to see if the circumstances are still the same or if changes have taken place that could alter the accommodation.

How regularly? A 30-day increment usually works well, so HR pros should shoot for check-ins every 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, etc.

Another area that should be reviewed regularly: Job descriptions. Many job descriptions are poorly written, so “essential job functions” are difficult to pin down, says Galindo.

For example, if a job requires a high stress tolerance that should be listed in the description because it would impact the accommodation process.

Galindo also offered what she called “The Reasonable Test,” which is a very simple test to determine whether or not an accommodation is reasonable. If the accommodation will have a negative impact on the company as a whole, chances are it’s not a reasonable accommodation.

And chances are, the smaller the company, the easier it’ll be to prove the accommodation negatively impacts the entire workforce.

Of course, this test should never be used to make actual employment-based decisions. When the ADA is in play, the interactive process is always the way to go.

6 forms accommodations take

Galindo’s presentation also touched on the six major types of accommodation types employees generally request under the ADA, which include:

  1. Physical (a different chair, a special keyboard, etc.)
  2. Functional (being temporarily relieved of certain job functions, providing “sheltered” work environments for staffers with anxiety issues, ADHD, etc.)
  3. Environmental (Moving the employee to a different work environment, limiting his or her exposure to hot or cold)
  4. Work Hours (modified or reduced hours, alternate shift assignments, etc.)
  5. Time Off (intermittent absences, continuous leave), and
  6. Other (work aides, coaching, respite from attendance or discipline or attendance, service dogs).

Do your people have to be paid for ‘snow days’?

With a good portion of the country digging out from recent staggering snowfalls, it seems like a good time to review what rights and responsibilities employers have to employees who miss work because of inclement weather.

Rebecca Goldberg, writing on the Connecticut Labor and Employment Law blog, offers a pretty comprehensive look at snow day absences. Here’s a rundown of what she had to say:

Exempt employees

Since they’re paid on a salary basis, except in rare circumstances, a reduction in hours doesn’t change exempts’ pay.

If a business is closed for less than a week, the law requires that exempt workers be paid their full salaries. But the feds also say it’s permissible to require the employee to use vacation days or other PTO to cover their absence — but if the employee has no PTO time available, his or her salary can’t be reduced.

Caveat: State laws may vary on these issues, so it’ll pay to check with your company attorney.

So, OK. You can make exempts use up vacation time for snow days. But Goldberg cautions that “if an exempt employee performs any work during the day (whether onsite or from home), the employee must be paid for the whole day.”

Partial-day deductions from a paid time off bank are allowed, even for exempt employees.  So, if an exempt employee chooses to come in late due to road conditions, a portion of a day may be deducted from the employee’s paid time off bank — again, if the employee has PTO available. Partial-day deductions in pay aren’t allowed.

Non-exempt employees

As you well know, non-exempts are paid only for hours worked, so generally speaking, if the snowdrifts prevent them from getting to the workplace, they don’t get paid. Again, though, Goldberg offers a word of caution: “Some passive time, such as on-call time, is considered ‘hours worked,’ so it is possible some non-exempt employees will need to be compensated, even if they do not perform any actual work.”

Some state laws require some form of payment for non-exempt employees who report to work and are then sent home early.

In addition, employers should count these hours as “hours of service” for purposes of the Affordable Care Act.

Tips for employers

Here’s Goldberg’s general advice on handling employee pay issues that come with absences caused by the weather:

Many employers choose to pay all employees for the full day, without deducting from a paid time off bank, for administrative simplicity, employee morale, or other reasons.  (Of course, a collective bargaining agreement may limit these choices.)

Whether or not to close the worksite can be a difficult decision and may be influenced by road conditions, the length of employees’ commutes, the nature of the job, whether schools are closed, production requirements, whether telework is possible, employee morale, and the amount of pay at issue.

Unless the employee’s job is of a critical nature (think hospital employees), employers should avoid subjecting an employee to discipline or termination for failing to report to work if the employee feels the road conditions are unsafe.

Employers should communicate to employees beforehand how the employees will be notified of a worksite closure.  Small employers typically will call each employee at home or send an email, while larger employers may announce a closure through a radio station or company website.

Whatever you choose, make sure employees know whether they are expected to report to work.

Discrimination claims cost company $15M

What’s scarier, these discrimination claims or the number of zeros in the award? 

California-based trucking outfit Matheson Trucking and Matheson Flight Extenders Inc. is paying dearly for racial discrimination claims levied against the company by seven former employees.

A lawsuit filed by the men — six of whom are black — claims Matheson let some pretty horrific stuff go on in its warehouse, according to a report by The Denver Post.

Some of the lawsuit’s claims, according to The Post:

  • White workers called black workers “lazy stupid Africans.”
  • White employees and black employees worked on separate sides of the warehouse.
  • White supervisors and workers often used the N-word around black workers.
  • In one instance, a white worker yelled that all blacks should be shot (and that worker was later promoted).
  • Calling a white worker, the seventh plaintiff, who stood up for his black co-workers, “the tribe’s assistant.”
  • That same white worker was fired after he challenged the company’s racist practices.
  • Black workers were passed over for desirable, double-pay holiday shifts, which were given to white workers with less seniority.

The lawsuit went on to say that the plaintiffs were discriminated against in all phases of employment — including hiring, promotion, vacation pay, discipline, wages, benefits and much more.

A federal jury awarded them nearly $15 million, and here’s how that broke down, according to The Post:

  • $14 million in punitive damages
  • $650,000 in emotional distress, and
  • $318,000 in back pay.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough for the employer, it’s likely on the hook for the plaintiff’s attorney fees, too.

Can your business survive an IC audit?

Remember how the DOL earmarked a ton of money to  help states root out businesses that misclassify their employees to avoid paying fringe benefits and payroll taxes?  
Well, at least one of these states has made good use of those funds – and you can bet the rest will soon follow.

New York’s Joint Enforcement Task Force on Employee Misclassification  discovered 133,000 workers who were misclassified as independent contractors or “off-the-books” workers in 2014.

Regulators conducted over 12,000 audits uncovering $316 million in unreported wages and over $40 million in unpaid unemployment insurance contributions.

New York is not alone in its efforts.

Eighteen other states have partnered with the DOL in its misclassification initiative.

What does all this mean?

For one thing, businesses can no longer afford to casually issue 1099s and hope an investigator does not come knocking.

Here are some tips to avoid misclassifying workers:
•    Employers should audit their labor pool. It’s important to remember that independent contractors will generally be free from supervision, direction and control.
•    Other indications of an
employee-employer relationship include setting the rate of pay and hours of work, requiring attendance at meetings and evaluating job performance.
•    If you want to make sure your company is on the same page with the IRS, ask the agency to determine whether your worker is an employee or independent contractor.
•    Excuses like, “He works only a few days a week,” “I have him use his own tools” or “He’s been doing this work so long he doesn’t need my supervision,” won’t fly with investigators.

Now that’s leave abuse: 25-year no-show finally gets himself fired

It’s tough to fight leave abuse these days. But apparently what you face is nothing compared to this organization. 

India’s Central Public Works Department approved Senior Electrical Engineer Shri A.K. Verma for earned leave in 1990. But apparently he must have confused earned leave with retirement, because it’s been 25 years since the department’s seen him.

Still, he was allowed to keep his job until just recently. That’s some impressive leave abuse, although it’s unclear whether or not Verma was paid during his absence.

Verma was finally canned on Jan. 8, 2015. His legacy will be that he managed to game the system for 15 years after only putting in 10 years worth of work (he was hired in 1980).

So what happened? The details coming out of India aren’t very clear.

However, the U.K.’s Sunday Express is blaming India’s seemingly excessive pro-employee labor laws, which it reports “make it hard for staff to be sacked for any reason other than criminal misconduct.”

It wasn’t until those laws were reformed recently that Verma’s case was unearthed and he was terminated, according to the Express, which went on to say: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also cracked down on people not turning up to work by making New Delhi bureaucrats sign in at work using a fingerprint scanner. ”

On-again, off-again investigation

A press release from India’s Central Public Words Department, obtained by Business Insider, attempted to explain what exactly happened with Verma.

It obviously leaves more than a few questions unanswered, but here’s the department’s breakdown of the situation:

“Shri A.K.Verma, who joined CPWD as an Assistant Executive Engineer in 1980 went on Earned Leave in December, 1990 and did not report to work thereafter. He went on seeking extension of leave which was not sanctioned and defied directions to report to work. An Inquiry was instituted against him in September, 1992 for major penalty for willful absence from duty. Due to non-cooperation of Shri Verma with the Inquiry and for other reasons, it got delayed and a fresh charge sheet was issued in 2005. The Inquiry Report, establishing the charges was submitted in July, 2007 and the same was accepted by the then Minister of Urban Development in August, 2007. But no further action was taken in the matter.”

Based on that info, it appears all it took for employees to beat out investigations was “non-cooperation.” If you ask us, that doesn’t exactly sound like the department had the most effective investigative system in place.

It wasn’t until Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu took office and ordered a review of pending investigations that Verma got what was coming to him. Otherwise, he might have been able to remain on leave for another quarter-century.