Company To Pay Monmouth County Man To Resolve Discrimination Complaint

A communications company has agreed to pay a Middletown man $20,000 to resolve a complaint that he was unlawfully dismissed from his job the day after he asked for an eight-day disability leave, according to the state.

Vantage Communications agreed to pay Michael O’Shea, who had worked out of the company’s former Ewing office for about 16 months before he lost his job in 2009, according to the state Division on Civil Rights.

He was 70-year-old at the time of his dismissal, and he was fired on July 31, 2009, the day after he asked for leave to undergo hip replacement surgery, according to the state.

“Disability status is protected under the law,” said Craig T. Sashihara, the director of the division. ”You can fire someone for performance reasons, but it’s illegal to fire someone because he or she needs to undergo a medical procedure. It is akin to firing someone based on their sexual orientation, race or gender. We hope this case will help drive home that message to employers across the state.”

Vantage, which no longer operates offices in New Jersey, has also “agreed to ensure it has an up-to-date anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy in place that includes discussion of age and disability, and to provide the Division with written verification of that policy,’’ a news release from the state said.

According to the consent order, the company agreed to settle the matter, but continued to deny the allegations in both O’Shea’s complaint and the state’s Finding of Probable Cause.

“Respondent denies the allegations...but nonetheless desires to settle this matter without the necessity of a public hearing,’’ the consent order said, adding that all parties wanted to settle the issue without the need for, or expense of, further litigation.

According to that news release:

O’Shea, began working for Vantage in April 2008. As a Channel Account Manager, with a territory in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, he was to earn a base salary plus sales commission.

Vantage officials said they counseled him numerous times because he was not meeting sales quotas. Then they decided to terminate him on July 2, 2009 -- weeks before he announced his hip surgery plans.

Managers said they did not give him advance notice about their plans to fire him because that was a standard company practice.

But, a manager who left the company after his first interview with state investigators later “revised his account of the O’Shea dismissal.”

That manager said no one on the company’s sales staff met their quotas, which he described as unrealistic.

He said “although his prior account of having counseled O’Shea regarding his performance was accurate, he had done so for all salespersons on his team and never counseled O’Shea individually, or told him that he would be terminated for failure to meet Vantage’s sales quota.”

“With the exception of O’Shea, he had never known Vantage to withhold notice of its decision to terminate a salesperson until the last day of the salesperson’s employment,’’ the former manager told investigators.

State investigators also determined there had been an on-going discussion in July 2009 about offering O’Shea a different job, with a lower salary or a “commission only” job.

The state did not find any indication that managers gave O’Shea formal notification that his job was in jeopardy. But several other salespeople, who were either younger or who did not ask for a medical leave, received written warnings and were placed on probation before they were fired. The company also kept a younger salesperson who was performing similarly to O’Shea.

Deputy Attorney General Megan Harris handled the matter for the state.