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Comment by greedo | Hacker News Reader

As someone who:

Had colon cancer

Has a colostomy

Was fired during my treatment

I'm very aware of how companies can try to discriminate against employees who are disabled. If Amazon tries to fire this guy for not meeting his "quota," then they also need to demonstrate that they've made reasonable accommodations. They also need to carefully document his performance issues. Juries are very amenable to a plaintiff suing for unfair dismissal.

Yes, this requires having enough money to hire a good lawyer, or finding one either working pro bono or willing to work on a contingency basis. Or finding an agency like the EEOC etc which will help with this.

The alternative is to just say "too bad" and let companies get away with this shit.

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No, that's not the only alternative. Where did you come by this defeatist perspective? Another alternative is union representation to confront the firing before it happens.

Sure, unions are another solution, but let's be clear:

A union only works if you were part of the union before you were fired unjustly. Without that, "too bad" is indeed often the best you can do.

I was once in the hospital with acute pancreatitis. It was unplanned, and would have killed me had I not made it to the ER. The company I was working for at the time "let me go" because I'd gone two days without showing up to work. Given that during those two days I was unconscious and nearly dead, that would have been impossible to do.

When I spoke to a lawyer, they were very clear that the company had broken the law (FMLA protects people in situations like mine), but that fighting it would cost me a lot of money, and that there was no guarantee I'd win. I fought them anyways. I spent months fighting them, and spent thousands of dollars. The company ended up receiving a fine for less that what I paid in lawyer fees, and that's it. No payout for me, no resolution. The state felt the case was at least strong enough to justify the fine, but not strong enough to justify anything else.

So, yeah, sometimes "too bad" is about all we get.

Yeah, seems like you could've benefitted from a union, back then. They would've at least negotiated severence while you were unconscious.

> A union only works if you were part of the union

Likewise, shoes only fit if you wear them, medicine only works if you take it, and wings only provide lift if you push air over them.

I agree with unionization, but I was discussing the current status quo for the majority of workers in the US. Hopefully unions will both grow in number and be strengthened.

Oh, I see. I misunderstood. Perhaps the fault lies with my ideological bent, or with the English language.

When you said "The alternative is to just say 'too bad' and let companies get away with this shit" there were no pronouns or whatever indicating the subject of the verbs "say" and "let". I assumed the subject of the sentence was a broad "we, as a society, over the next several decades", whereas I'm now realizing you meant "one, as an individual caught in this particularly tragic moment."

Thank you for clarifying.

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