Ruan Lawsuit

well frankly, you are not the only one to have gone thru this. many here simply get up and leave, rather than to stay and suffer. seems you chose to stay and suffer.

do people report these things? yes.

does anything get done? sometimes yes, many times no.

rather than to try and take on one company and then the Teamsters?

move on to another place, cuz as you have seen, you ain't gonna fight city hall....

this can drag on and on, THEY HAVE MONEY, YOU DO NOT, can you afford delay after delay and court appearances that get rescheduled at the last minute?

cuz trust me, court DOES GET rescheduled at the snap of a finger!

just move on the next time you get rooked.

your story is nothing new to nearly all of us.

and if you ain't got video and pictures and witnesses, you got crap for a defense/complaint.

you seem to also forget, Ruan is a driver and truck leasing/logistics company like Ryder, Penske and Lily Transportation, to name 3 i have worked for. those companies WORK FOR THE CUSTOMER, the customer here being Atlas and thier workers, the Teamsters. you are an OUTSIDER, and/or a trouble maker in thier eyes.

that's why Ruan fired your butt, you were shaking the tree for the apples.

that can easily be a multi-million dollar a year contract, do you think Ruan is going to allow some nobody to ruin that, and put people for Ruan out of work??

i hardly think so.

 

Then you want to explain why you go into a Food Warehouse and your trailer is not clean they tell you to go get it washed out... Because of possible contamination

 

They fired one of my coworkers three years ago, for refusing to drive in unsafe conditions. The company counsel called him back 2 days later telling him there had been a "mistake" and to come back to work, but he declined. They are shady. They also retaliate against workers for filing workers compensation. I am very interested in this by the way. Have you actually filed a lawsuit and retained counsel, or is this just getting lost in the administrative complaint system? The Federal OSHA runs a wonderful mediation program if settlement is your goal, and if your complaint has merit. It's a form of shuttle diplomacy, and if they don't walk out, they want to settle it.

Good luck to you dude, keep us posted. It sounds like you are fighting a whistleblower case and that sucks.

 

You know, if you are in fact pursuing litigation you should probably not post details of it on this website. Ruan's corporate counsel can get this information quite easily. You should run it by your attorney before posting...

 

I'm interested in knowing more about this just because I've been there myself. In fact, I'm probably totally crazy from dealing with employers who violate the law. Do your case a favor though, and don't post explicit details of it online. I'm no attorney, but I know employment law from being in a union for a few years and taking a few employers down myself. Send me a PM. I've been there before, but other people who don't understand are going to pass judgement.

 

Sure some are very strict. Walmart not so much, at least not for their own DC to store shipments. Where are all the sick people though? Seems like it hasn't been a problem.

 

I think the cross contamination claim with a reefer trailer floor and products that are on pallets, packaged, boxed, and shrink wrapped is BS... I can certainly see not shipping a load on a trailer that has blood from say a previous load of chicken or meat, obviously that should be washed out... Having worked for a couple different reefer companies I have personally seen units stop working with food on the trailer for a day or two and nothing was said... I would be more concerned about that. I'm sure that happens a lot... You think a small time O/O who is a flat tire away from bankruptcy is going to let the receiver know the reefer was off for 3 days cause it broke down and he was trying to get a loan to fix it ... LOL.

 

The fact is, to have a whistleblower claim, the original safety complaint does not need to have merit. The company cannot do an investigation, and then say, your complaint of safety caused us to investigate, and we determined there was no actual danger--so we are firing you for causing a disruption. That's known as the "chilling effect," and is precisely why we have whistleblower statutes to protect workers. If you punish someone for speaking up about potential unsafe conditions, it sends a message to the rest of the workforce to never speak up. This causes people to feel reluctant to voice safety concerns out of fear of annoying the boss. This will ultimately trickle down to the death of someone on the job, even if we cannot trace it down to the root cause. Things get overlooked all the time because someone was apprehensive to speak up.

You cannot be punished or retaliated against for making a reasonable complaint of workplace safety, in good faith. The key is "good faith." A worker can't make a safety complaint that is frivolous, when he realizes that he is about to be terminated for prior documented issues in his employment. A worker can't make that complaint thinking, this will save him from termination because he just made a protected complaint. But the timing of events between the protected complaint and adverse employment actions, combined with that employee's history before the protected complaint, usually shows whether the employer acted with illegal motives or not. It's a complicated area of employment law that I've unfortunately found myself dealing with before.

I wrote a post called Your Rights Under OSHA 11(c) a few months ago. Give it a read. I abandoned the thread because people were too quick to judge.

 

I just read some of the OP's original messages on this thread. He states that a government agency has issued preliminary findings, that his safety complaints are protected activity. That alone is huge, and congrats to him on that huge win. Proving a protected activity is difficult as it is.

If the OP isn't bound by a pre dispute arbitration agreement, I think he needs to get a straight employment lawyer to take this on a contingency, and to file a lawsuit directly in Federal court. He probably has a claim under OSHA 11(c) and maybe a few state labor code violations, depending on where he is located.

Arbitration is horrible and I never sign those pre-dispute arbitration agreements employers love to slip into the pre hire paperwork.

Here's how you need to look at this, OP. Have you got your personnel file yet? You would need to establish the following elements to win your case;

1) You were performing satisfactorily at your job and had very little the company could use against you up until the date you made your protected complaint.

2) You engaged in the protected activity under Federal OSHA

3) As a direct and proximate result of your complaint, you suffered adverse employment actions. The timing of events will indicate this. If you were clean in your personnel file up until the "protected activity," you are halfway there.

4) After you made the protected complaint, the employer began retaliating against you by changing your hours, changing your pay or schedule, demoting you, reassigning your job duties, made your working conditions so unpleasant you wanted to quit. The employer might have began writing you up over petty issues (that they usually ignore for your other coworkers), the employer will start "papering your file" with a series of petty write-ups, in an attempt to legitimize your subsequent wrongful termination.

5) The timing of events between your complaint, and your termination, is suspicious. They call this 'temporal proximity,' and it's huge.

6) You also have to prove that the direct individual who fired you, had direct knowledge of your protected complaint. Without that, you cannot prove "employer knowledge."

The good news is, the damages accrue all the way through this litigation. Since the OP has received preliminary findings in his favor already, I think this case will go in his favor. I'm just wondering why these idiots at Ruan haven't decided to settle it yet. I"m thinking it's because your case is in arbitration rather than litigation; that gives them less incentive to settle with you because there's no publicity on the case.

Best of luck to you ! Let us know where you're at on the case, but don't do it publicly... you might blow 5 years of hard work if you post about it on here.