A jury has awarded Thomas Cole of Vergennes more than $3.2 million in a federal lawsuit after finding that Cole was fired in retaliation for reporting health and safety concerns in his workplace.
The jury on Friday awarded Cole $140,943 in lost wages, $75,000 in emotional distress damages and $3 million in punitive damages.
“When retaliation is proven, there needs to be a large disincentive to do so because it’s hard to prove,” Cole’s attorney, William Pettersen, said in an interview.
Kevin Kite, lead attorney representing Cole’s former employer, Education and Training Resources, declined to comment on the case.
According to court documents, Education and Training Resources is a Kentucky-based business that operates several Job Corps Centers for the U.S. Department of Labor. These centers offer free-of-charge job training programs, where students live in dorms on site.
ETR was awarded a Department of Labor contract for the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes and took over operations there in June 2018.
Students living at Northlands are responsible for cleaning their dorms. In July 2018, Cole noticed they lacked proper cleaning supplies.
On Monday, July 23, 2018, Cole also witnessed another residential counselor tell her supervisor she was very sick. According to court documents, the sick employee was told she could not go home until she found someone else to cover her shift. Because of that, Cole’s ill colleague worked her entire shift that Monday.
Cole met with the center’s director the following day to raise concerns about the lack of cleaning supplies and his coworker who was told to work while ill.
The lawsuit states, “(H)e expressed his concern that these violations placed the students and employees at a risk to their health.”
Later on Tuesday, Cole notified his supervisors and left work early because he had begun to feel sick as well. On Wednesday, Cole left a voicemail for ETR’s human resources office in Kentucky that he wanted to report concerns about the Vergennes center.
Wednesday and Thursday were his scheduled days off. When he returned to work Friday, he emailed his concerns to human resources and the center director. ETR fired him the same day, and his termination notice was signed by the company’s vice president.
In court documents, ETR said Cole was fired for missing work.
Pettersen said this reasoning was “deceit,” as Cole worked Monday, gave notice to leave early on Tuesday and was scheduled to be off Wednesday and Thursday. Pettersen also said ETR was aware of Cole’s complaints at the time they fired him.
Pettersen argued there was evidence that Cole’s firing was part of a larger pattern of behavior by ETR’s corporate leadership to discourage employees from complaining about working conditions.
“It’s essential to the safety of the entire state of Vermont, and the entire country, that employees feel safe making safety complaints, because they are the ones who are on the ground floor, the ones who are most often the first to see a safety issue and be able to ring the alarm for it to be addressed,” Pettersen said in an interview.
The suit was technically filed against Foxmar Inc., which was doing business as ETR in Vergennes.
Pettersen brought claims under the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Act and Vermont Earned Sick Time Act; both ban retaliation against employees who report violations.
ETR could appeal Friday’s decision to a higher court.
