Disability Insanity--alcoholic Driver

A self-confessed alcoholic truck driver has suit filed by EEOC on his behalf--to force Trucking Co to continue hiring him as a truck driver!!

Posted: Friday, August 19, 2011 9:35 am

EEOC Suit: Trucker Terminated Illegally By Jeff Arnold
TIMES RECORD • JARNOLD@SWTIMES.COM The Times Record | 0 comments

A lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Smith by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Old Dominion Freight Line, claiming the company fired a former employee in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After being employed by Old Dominion for almost five years, a driver named Charles Grams self-reported to a supervisor that he had an alcohol abuse problem on June 29, 2009, and by July 24, 2009, was fired for “job abandonment,” according to the complaint.

On July 1, 2009, Grams met with a U.S. Department of Transportation-certified Substance Abuse Professional, who reported to Old Dominion that Grams would participate in out-patient treatment and could be returned to work.

Instead, Gram was told by management he would “probably never be returned to driver status” and offered a part-time dock worker position “whenever one became available” earning $12 per hour — versus $22 per hour he earned as a driver — with no benefits, according to the lawsuit.

Believing he would have to pay for the private out-patient treatment and then be reimbursed by his insurance company only if it approved the treatment, Grams concluded he couldn’t afford private treatment and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous, according to the lawsuit.

Grams informed management, and on July 24, 2009, was discharged for job abandonment.

Alcoholism is recognized as a disability under the under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Grams was capable of performing the “essential functions of a driving position,” and the DOT does not prevent employees who self-report abuse from returning to driving positions, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges that other drivers holding driver positions with Old Dominion nationwide self-reported alcohol abuse in February 2009, and like Grams, were banned from returning to driving positions.

The Thomasville, N.C.-based company has 211 service centers across the United States, including the Fort Smith facility, according to the lawsuit.

The EEOC is asking the court to:

◗ Prohibit Old Dominion from banning recovering alcoholics from driving positions.

◗ Require the company to carry out policies, practices and programs consistent with the law.

◗ Require Old Dominion to make Grams and other drivers affected by the company policy whole by providing back pay and prejudgment interest, and compensation for past and future “pecuniary and non-pecuniary” losses resulting from unlawful practices.

◗ Require Old Dominion pay punitive damages.

Representatives at Old Dominion’s North Carolina executive offices did not respond to messages left seeking comment.

 

I can see where the plaintiff is coming from, but I have a feeling this case is going to be ruled in Old Dominion's favor.

 

This is really insane.

The critics of ADA saw this coming and the libs supporting the law called them crazy.

But they have been proven right.

 

What a dilemma. Can't blame the company. They're liable.
And on the other hand, it's a message to anyone with a problem: admit the problem and ask for treatment help = lose your job.

What a mess.

 

That's lovely. As if drunk driving isn't dangerous enough, let's put a drunk behind the wheel of a big rig. Not to mention punishing a company for taking a common sense approach to protecting other people and the company. They offered the guy a job on the dock, but of course this (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) has decided he is entitled to endanger everyone else so he can keep the job he wants.

 

i don't think so, the DOT has rules on this sort of thing. (surprise! they had rules about bedding being white at one time!)

they demoted him and took away his ablity to pay for treatment. they screwed up.

 

I stand corrected....

 

being drunk, and being a drunk often go hand in hand, but they don't depend on each other.

 

That's great.

So now the company has to coddle this drunk for the rest of his life?

What will he do while he can't drive?

Count the flies on the wall?

 

when i was a teamster, i was the union steward's helper for close to a year...that made me his administrative assistant while we were on the road. add on my certification for reasonable suspicion drug tests, i've seen both sides of this coin. this is my game.

 

work on the dock...which is punishment by itself. those guys sweat for a living. believe me, he'll get better and back behind the wheel as fast as he can.

 

According to the psychiatric diagnostic statistics manual in the USA, Alcoholism is a medical disease. Making Acloholism a disease was really eastablished for the psychiatric and medical industry to be able to recover payment from medical insurance providers and the USA taxpayer for treatment for the alcoholic who frequents the ERs and mental institutions. In addition, sever alcoholics can become violently ill and die from withdraw from ETOH. Hence the need for medical treatment.

The only problem I have with Alcoholics who commit crimes are, they refuse to accept responsibility for their codependent actions and always blame or have an excuse for their inability to follow the rules of society. Some alcoholics never break the law, and function every day with jobs and families.

Do the crime, they must do the time. Just like American fools who go to forigen countries and screw up and get jailed. Then they want the USA taxpayer to spend thousands to politic them out of the screw up.

 

he admitted he had a problem. isn't that the first step to recovery?

 

It could be the first step to a disability check at taxpayer expense.

 

Often the most sever of sever alcoholics in the USA are on assistance. Most of this small group of alcoholics are the homeless ones who frequent your local ER each costing the taxpayer several thousand $ for each visit. Their frequent ER visits make the hospitals a lot of money. Why, because most of these alcoholics and drug addicts are often suicidal and will calim suicide to get access to a warm bed, a hot meal, and a cleanup (or a homeless makeover). Also because they are suicidal they must be kept under 72 hour hold. Then they get back on the streets in 72hrs and do the same thing over again when they drink or smoke up their assistance check.

With the new Medical insurance laws, the ERs/Hospitals will now be financiall compensated for treating these high cost addicts at the taxpayer expense.
Thus, there will be less effort to create plans or programs to deter the Alcoholic and Addict from frequenting the ERs in the USA. Before the law, the addict would run out of annual benifits after 1-2 visits at the ER, and the hospital would eat the cost for the rest of the year. Hence, the State governments and hospitals created urgent care and crisis programs for these addicts. Say good by to those services and expect to pay more taxes to fund the hospitals.

 

going from $1320 a week to $800 a month isn't really worth the paperwork.

 

You forgot that with the $800 cash you might get disability payments from where you work and you will certainly get a Medicaid card, food stamps, housing subsidy, and possibly training for an alcoholic-compatible career like politics or law.

 

from what i understand, any income counts against SSI. rented out your last house because you couldn't sell it for $800 a month? surprise! you get no SSI. Uncle Sugar is brutal when you step outside of the rules.

anyhow, line haul at companies like OD, UPS, and FedEx is like being on disability. it's the same run, at the same time, everyday. terminal to terminal. it's one of the jobs that drivers dream about: 5 hours out, change trailers, turn around and go home. no shippers or receivers, no surprise driver unloads. the old hand must have been seriously worried to even have thought about seeking help to swing an ax at the goose that lays the golden egg.

 

Let's not forget the cost for the frequent monthly ER visit. Costing the taxpayer about $5000 a shot with 72 hr hold, Bum makeover, and bed and breakfast for 3 days.

If you gave an addict $5000 a month he would be a $5000 a month addict. give it to the hospital and you got a well paid staff. especially when there are about 5-6+ of these comming through the ER each day. More in some juristictions and more on a full moon.

In fact some use the ER 2-3x a month.

 

So the question I have pondered many a time dealing with this population is weather it is better for the addict to kill themself or to save it's life?

If you let them kill themself it would not be moral.
If you let them kill themself they would end their misery and suffering.
If you let them kill themself the hospitial would lose a steady income of revenue from the taxpayer.
If you save them you cost the taxpayer massive amounts of money over time and you continue to enable the addict to suffer forever.

As we all know the sever addict will allways be a sever addict. And all the sever ones who have found the medical facilities as their last resort for a hot meal, place to sleep, and get a makeover, have never been able to succeed in treatment and continue to suffer. In fact these addicts do realy well in jail and prison because their addiction is so strong that they will do whatever it takes while sober to get back on the pipe and/or the juice.

 

where did you get this from a story about a guy worried about his drinking, but hasn't even gotten a DUI?

 

Nope.

$800/month is too much money to get Medicaid. You might get food stamps, some, maybe $100/month, you will NEVER get "housing subsidy", those lines are 10 years long and only if you have young children does someone have a chance of ever getting it. And getting Section 8 doesn't get you a place, you then have to find someone who will take Section 8 and take the person.

The employment training programs are a joke, and they all have been unfunded anyway.

There never was YOUR "dream world" out there, and there is even less now.

 

I'm not condoning this opportunist at all, but he does have a case here, unfortunately. Alcoholism is officially labeled as a disease. Chronic alcoholics are sick people, and unfortunately, you can't discriminate against them in the workplace. I had a boozer on my payroll a while back, and all I could do was keep an eye on him and his behavior on the job. I couldn't fire him for being a drunk because then he could have filed a lawsuit against me like this guy in the OP did. I eventually got rid of him for crappy attendance because he kept calling in sick, but it was a real pain in the ass dealing with the lush up to that point.

 

You're all heart, buddy.

Have you ever seen what alcohol withdrawal does to people? It's not pretty. Alcohol dependency is a sickness. You can't just quit cold turkey because it could kill you. My wife works as a nurse in a rehab clinic, and she's told me all the horror stories. People who get the shakes and seizures from their addiction should be pitied, not punished.

I'm a bit skeptical about the guy in the OP because he sounds more like a functioning alcoholic than one that suffers from alcohol dependency (there is a difference).

 

Unfortunately, the discussions about what is an "illness" and what isn't are at least as political as they are scientific. For example, "sexual addiction" went into the DSM as an "illness", then came out, and now some are trying to put it back in. It obviously should be in since that would be a great defense against accusations of sexual harrassment and even sexual assault. "Oh, it's not his fault, poor thing, he's sick, he's a sex addict." Homosexuality was a disorder, now it's not. Pedophilia is a disorder but there is a move to remove it from edition 5.

Political games with people's lives.

I worked at a police department and even the lawyers agreed that "reasonable accommodation" was not an issue for alcoholic police officers. But, we were required to try to help them even if they didn't want to be helped. The taxpayers paid for more than one officer to go to a residential treatment program. That one was $50,000 for each patient. I learned not long ago that one of the men who went to that program and quit the department not long after the program had died. He got very drunk, a normal state, and went outside in his underwear in below zero weather and passed out. Case closed. The people who went to AA or RR or individual counseling did better but in all fairness those were most often people who realized they had a problem with alcohol and not just a problem with their boss or their wife or whomever and did want to deal with it.