A federal class action lawsuit alleges that Class 1 railroad CSX wrongly discouraged workers from taking leave under the Family Medical Leave Act and retaliated against workers who used the leave.
The complaint, filed last Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleges that CSX inflated the amount of time employees were charged for FMLA leave, punished them for taking the leave, and terminated or suspended over 100 employees since 2017 on the allegation that they took FMLA leave fraudulently.
U.S. Department of Labor regulations generally require employers to account for FMLA leave using the shortest period of time that they use to account for other forms of leave. The complaint alleges that CSX, however, accounts for FMLA leave by the day instead of by the hour. So, for example, if an employee takes FMLA leave for four hours from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., CSX calculates the leave as two days instead of four hours, according to the lawsuit.
Beginning in 2015, CSX implemented an attendance policy that gives negative points for absences but allows employees to remove those points through subsequent uninterrupted attendance over a specified period of time, according to the complaint. It alleges that employees who take FMLA leave during the remediation period are deemed ineligible to reduce their points, meaning employees who have taken FMLA leave are treated less favorably than those who have not.
The suit also alleges that CSX’s allegations of fraud by employees were baseless and that workers provided evidence for their entitlement to FMLA leave but were terminated or suspended anyway.
Plaintiffs listed in the complaint are Brian Click, Harvey Ferran, Nicholas Ingrodi, Brad Jackson, Jeremy Likes, Chris Straight and Antoine Thompson, representing themselves and others in similar situations.
According to the complaint, all of the plaintiffs suffer from serious health conditions covered under FMLA. Click, Ingrodi and Jackson were each fired after CSX accused them of abusing FMLA leave in regard to their health conditions. Thompson, Straight and Likes were each suspended for five days without pay after being accused of abusing FMLA leave. Ferran was suspended 32 days.
Nicholas Thompson of Casey Jones Law Firm represents the plaintiffs.
“Time and time again, CSX has demonstrated that profit is what matters to it,” Thompson said in an email to FreightWaves. “CSX will jeopardize the public’s safety if it thinks that will increase profit. CSX will ignore its obligations to its customers if it thinks that will increase its profit. And CSX will abuse its employees if it thinks that will increase its profit. This includes by getting rid of them if they dare get sick. If they need time off to care for themselves or their loved ones, CSX will fire an employee, no matter how long they have loyally served it. CSX’s actions violate the law and, perhaps more importantly, common decency.”
FreightWaves reached out to CSX for comment, but the company said it does not comment on pending litigation.