The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing a manufacturing plant on behalf of Ronald Kratz II, who says he was fired in 2009 for being obese, despite having received very good employee reviews in both 2008 and 2009.
Here’s the thing, though: Kratz had worked for the company since 1994, so what changed after fifteen years? Let’s be honest here, he didn’t get to be over 600 pounds overnight: he passed the medical definition of “morbidly obese” several hundred pounds ago, and it’s a safe bet he was already there when he was hired.
So I once more invoke Bickel’s Second Media Disclaimer: There is both more and less to this story than meets the eye.
I’m going to offer up the possibility that he was let go in 2009 because the economy was terrible and lots of other people were also let go. (I have no facts to support this claim… but 2009 saw a LOT of layoffs and terminations… even of people with good performance reviews.)
I’ll second what James said and add that someone that obese is bound to have health plans that may impact the company’s health insurance costs. That may be a factor in who goes on the cut list.
Is it illegal to discriminate against the obese?
Yes, if it interferes with the job in question. If the job involves, say, repairing telephones inside of telephone booths, then not hiring a morbidly obese person doesn’t violate the ADA.
So does that mean that the guy who sued a rapid transit company because he wasn’t hired to drive a train because he couldn’t fit into the driver’s seat lost his suit? I read about the suit a long time ago and never did hear how it came out.
You’d better look up how that case turned out, before mentioning it. Your post just doesn’t have any content to it.
It’s unlikely that his weight interfered with his job performance, Proginoskes, since he’d gotten good job reviews earlier that same year and presumably he didn’t shoot up to 600+ pounds overnight.
I don’t have enough information to say whether my hypothesis is correct.
Maybe new safety regulations were passed, and the accpetable maximum weight was lowered below what he weighed?
If this lawsuit doesn’t pay out, he could try finding a booth at his local White Castle that will fit him.
You don’t think it’s possible for someone to go from 200 lbs to 600 in under five years?
Not unless it’s caused by some serious health issues, no. And remember, his weight didn’t keep him from getting very positive work performance reviews earlier that same year — so if his weight kept him from being able to do his job, then the massive weight gain had to have come over the course of just a few months.
I read the whole story and the employer was indeed discriminating against him for his wt. It wasn’t an economically driven layoff since he was replaced by a person of average wt. He was flat out told that he was too big to perform the same job that he had been doing for many years with positive reviews.
full story:
http://www.chron.com/business/article/Worker-fired-for-too-much-weight-2193407.php
I still don’t think we’ve seen the end of this (as per Bickel’s Second Media Disclaimer). In those pictures, it looks like he weighs a LOT more than I do, and I’m right around 300 pounds; he doesn’t look “under 300″ to me.
“The company also told EEOC investigators that Kratz had difficulty bending, stooping and kneeling. … But like his co-workers, Kratz sorted parts on a raised platform, so he didn’t have to stoop, Boutchee said.”
What would have happened if a tool had fallen on the floor? I doubt that BAE uses antigravity hammers, so he’d have to bend over; this is the sort of reasoning that BAE may have used.
FIFTEEN years not five. Definitely possible to pack on enough to go from pudgy or even skinny to morbidly obese over the period from
1994 to 2009. Still open as to justified termination or not.