A worker at a Duluth, MN nursing home got angry when her employer changed her working hours and quit. Was she entitled to receive unemployment compensation?

What happened. “Berthe” started working as a health unit coordinator at a Duluth nursing home run by Viewcrest in September 2007. Her duties included data entry, scheduling appointments, and transcribing physicians’ orders.

Berthe quickly ran afoul of her supervisor, “Shaw,” Viewcrest’s director of nursing, who found many faults with her work. On July 10, 2008, Shaw put Berthe on a performance improvement plan that stated three identified problems with her performance and requested improvement in those areas. First, it stated that Berthe had been absent more than 20 times in the previous 9 months, not including a leave of absence that she took that spring for a serious health problem. Second, it said that Shaw had concerns about Berthe’s behavior, particularly her practice of talking inappropriately about her co-workers in front of other colleagues. Third, Berthe tended to bypass the established chain of command when complaining about co-workers; she was instructed to follow official procedure and bring complaints to the appropriate level of management.

On August 21, Berthe was informed that her working hours had been changed; instead of working 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., she would now work 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. That day she wrote a letter to Shaw and six other managers, including the nursing home administrator. She complained that her new schedule would not work because she had scheduled doctors’ appointments in the late afternoon, and said that she felt she was being harassed and discriminated against. Viewcrest convened a review panel of union representatives and management that approved the change to her schedule. Berthe was given permission to keep her existing doctors’ appointments but not to make new ones that conflicted with her new hours.

On August 26, Berthe submitted her resignation. She applied for unemployment benefits, but the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) found that she was ineligible. She appealed, and an unemployment law judge (ULJ) agreed that she was ineligible because her employer had not caused her to quit her job. She appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

What the court said. In most cases, employees who quit jobs voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment benefits. The state law (Minn. Stat. Sec. 268.095) makes an exception for employees who quit “because of a good reason caused by the employer.” A “good reason” under the law must be something directly related to employment, for which the employer is responsible, adverse to the worker, and that would compel an average, reasonable worker to quit, finding unemployment preferable to continuing in the job. An employee can claim this exception only if he or she complained to the employer and gave the employer a reasonable opportunity to correct the unacceptable conditions.

The ULJ found that Berthe did not quit for a good reason caused by her employer. Berthe claimed that her changed schedule and the requirement that she follow her employer’s procedures for reporting complaints amounted to harassment and discrimination. The ULJ disagreed, finding that Viewcrest had no intention of harassing or discriminating against Berthe. He also found that Berthe had not given her employer enough time to correct any adverse conditions because she quit right after arriving at work on August 26.

The Court of Appeals agreed with the ULJ. Viewcrest changed Berthe’s hours in order to improve patient care, a valid business reason. Changing a work schedule in a way that merely inconveniences an employee does not constitute a good reason to quit caused by the employer. And by quitting so soon after the schedule change, she afforded Viewcrest no opportunity to fix any problems it caused her. The Court affirmed the ULJ’s decision denying Berthe unemployment benefits. Magariner v. Viewcrest Health Center, Inc., Court of Appeals of Minnesota, No. A08-2265 (2009).

Point to remember: Viewcrest’s valid business reason for the schedule change went a long way to show that the change hadn’t been made to harass Berthe or compel her to quit.