The US Dept. of Labor said Staples failed to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act when it didn’t tell a furniture sales executive whom it later fired that he could have taken leave to care for his critically ill wife.
In September 2010 and over the months that followed, Jeffrey Angstadt told his employer, Staples Contract and Commercial, a Miami-based subsidiary of Staples Inc., that he needed to take leave to care for his spouse, the DOL said in a statement Thursday.
While Angstadt was eligible for federal workplace protections for those coping with the illness of a family member, no one at Staples notified him as required by law. For the next two years, Angstadt used his personal, sick and vacation days, and worked remotely as needed to balance his work obligations with the need to care for his wife, who died last year.
In January 2012, his supervisors decided Angstadt wasn’t meeting his job responsibilities, and the company fired him. Two months later, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division district office in Columbia, S.C., launched an investigation and, in June 2013, sued Staples.
As part of a settlement agreement, Staples and its subsidiary have agreed to pay Angstadt $137,500 in lost wages and benefits, plus an equal amount in liquidated damages. The agreement was reached in a consent decree approved by a federal court.
“When an employee must be away from work to care for a loved one, there are no second chances to get it right,” said Wage and Hour Division Administrator Dr. David Weil. “For more than 20 years, the Family and Medical Leave Act has been a critical safety net for working families. It ensures that no one should have to choose between the job they need and the family they love.”
As a part of the settlement, the company will also promote an enterprise-wide policy for compliance with the FMLA by providing training for human resources and other managerial personnel with respect to FMLA notice and eligibility requirements; post FMLA enforcement posters in the workplace; and investigate and respond to complaints of potential FMLA violations concerning an employee’s notice of FMLA rights, including correcting violations when discovered, the DOL said.
