NLRB Case Closed in Favor of an EF Teacher Fired for her Protected, Concerted Activities

Once upon a time there was an ESL teacher. Let's call her Abigail Jessup. Irony is fitting here as that is a pseudonym used by (at least one of) those at EF hell bent on bringing her down. She worked at one of the biggest private school companies in the world. Despite their size, the corporation that is EF did not have the smarts to know that what they were doing was wrong. Abigail pointed their misdeeds out to them and they fired her. Well, that was not only wrong, it was illegal. Her activities were concerted and protected under the law. Maybe EF hadn't heard of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) before firing Abigail and, frankly, neither had she. But some savvy employment lawyers pointed Abigail in the right direction - to this government entity which was started by FDR to protect the rights of workers. There was an NLRB hearing and perhaps EF thought it could get away with the lies they had been telling, but, in the end, the judge just wasn’t having it. The NLRB judge found in favor of Abigail. EF, with its infinite financial resources, appealed the case, but they were only delaying the inevitable. And all the while, the back-pay that they were later forced to pay was piling up. Three years down the road (the wheels of justice grind slowly... but they usually wind up at the right place), victory belonged to Abigail. EF was forced to post at the school a notice issued by the NLRB of how they had done Abigail wrong (see July 28 blog entry above). They had to also send this notice out in an email to the staff/teachers. They had to pay Abigail her back-wages including 401(k) matchings and medical expenditures. Finally, they had to offer her her job back. Needless to say, Abigail was ready to be rid of them. Abigail was fired “after ․ [she was] threatened with unspecified reprisals for helping coworkers and sending group emails addressing employees' terms and conditions of employment, ․ because she engaged in protected, concerted activity.” She hopes that this is a lesson to all ESL teachers out there that "helping coworkers" is always the right path no matter how divisive the corporation tries to make things by pitting teacher against teacher with selective teaching assignments and erroneous student evaluation scores. BTW, during the hearing, EF managers were asked to explain how evaluation scores were derived. They were unable to do so. I hope you enjoyed this David vs. Goliath tale. If you would like to read it in legal jargon, see http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-dc-circuit/1765923.html