Social Security Mismatch Wasn't Grounds To Fire
Recent Cases
Thirty-three janitors at the Los Angeles Lakers' arena were wrongfully fired for not responding quickly enough to a request to provide a correct Social Security number, the 9th Circuit ruled.
Aramark Facilities Services received a "no-match" letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA) stating that information for 48 of its workers at the Staples Center did not match the numbers in the SSA database.
This caused Aramark to suspect that the janitors were in the United States illegally.
Aramark gave the employees three days to begin the process of getting a new Social Security card. Fifteen employees complied, and the other 33 were fired a week later.
The Service Employees International Union filed a grievance, and an arbitrator gave the employees their jobs back, along with back pay. The district court overturned the ruling, stating it violated public policy on immigration.
Judge Hall reversed the district court ruling.
"This case boils down to a single issue: whether the SSA's no-match letter - and the fired employees' responses - put Aramark on constructive notice that it was employing undocumented workers," Hall wrote.
But the government agency failed to do so in the Aramark case, the court ruled, as constructive notice required positive proof of a workers' undocumented status.
"The employees' failure to meet the deadline," Hall said, "is simply not probative enough of their immigration status to indicate that public policy would be violated if they were reinstated and given back pay."
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If you were injured in a work-related accident and have been researching workers’ compensation, you may have seen it described as a “no-fault” system. One of the most important things to understand about the workers’ compensation system in Illinois is that it is based on a “no-fault” system. What does this mean, exactly?
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A no-fault insurance system, such as workers’ comp, works by paying claims regardless of who is to blame for an accident. This provides an important layer of protection for injured workers, sparing them from having to through additional litigation and the through the additional burden of proving who was at fault before receiving benefits.
In Illinois, even though you don’t have to prove that your injury was your employer’s fault, you do have to prove that your injury happened at work or as a result of work. If you would like help to file your workers' compensation claim, Krol, Bongiorno, & Given’s experienced workers' comp lawyers are here to help. With over 60 years of combined legal experience, the KBG law firm is a leader in the field of workers’ compensation law and we have earned the reputation as aggressive advocates for injured workers before the IWCC.