I was reasonable to ask to WFH in early COVID days: lawsuit • The Register

His former employer can’t “critically” declare that he was unable to carry out his job remotely when it fired him for refusing to work in individual through the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, an engineer instructed a decide final week.

Yiyu Lin, a senior challenge engineer finishing up technical execution of initiatives within the design and manufacture of excessive voltage energy transmission methods, labored at Massachusetts-based CGIT Methods Inc till 2020, the yr it dismissed him for a motive it listed as “job abandonment” when he didn’t return to work on March 31 following its request that he come again to the workplace.

He’s suing the corporate for incapacity discrimination and age discrimination.

Lin’s submitting final week asks the decide to seek out on his claims earlier than the trial, and at hand down an order scheduling a trial “on damages solely.” He claims [PDF] within the Massachusetts district court docket submitting that his job didn’t require his presence; that his request for “eight days depart of continued distant work was affordable as a matter of regulation”; and that CGIT didn’t problem his medical situation “on the time” together with by no means in search of extra data or documentation about it, and will subsequently be stopped from arguing their former worker “was not disabled.”

It additionally states that Lin, who’s Chinese language-American, in keeping with CDC COVID-19 steerage is “disproportionately… extra more likely to find yourself in a hospital ICU or morgue.”

Lin’s preliminary 2020 criticism claimed racial discrimination, and his amended 2021 complaint [PDF] consists of recent claims his “Chinese language accent” raised “points” from each “inside staff of Defendant and exterior shoppers.”

He additionally alleges within the amended submitting that CGIT would ship reps from spiritual organizations to the office in Medway, Massachusetts, “to talk with staff through the workday regarding their spiritual religion on a month-to-month foundation.” Lin additionally says CEO Tom Ferguson would ship religious-themed emails (headed Studying Non-obligatory) together with one stating: “Sure, although you stroll by way of the valley of the shadow of dying, you’ll not concern COVID-19, for God is with you.”

In accordance with the amended criticism, Lin mentioned he’d participated in every day morning engineering standing conferences by way of Webex/Skype; participated in inside challenge standing conferences by way of Webex; participated in weekly challenge standing conferences regarding ongoing initiatives; and executed and accomplished all duties by way of the corporate’s VPN. He additionally claims that three white staff, two of them engineers, had all requested WFH and been authorized on March 26, 27 and 28.

He additionally claims that CGIT’s “company workplace in Texas was stopping Medway from implementing security measures.”

In accordance with Lin’s 2021 criticism:

His former bosses at CGIT, in the meantime, claimed final week that if he had come to work on March 31, 2020, he wouldn’t have been fired. In its response to the movement for abstract judgement, CGIT claims the case ought to by no means go to trial, claiming [PDF]: “There isn’t a proof that the decisionmakers ever raised any challenge regarding Plaintiff’s accent or ethnicity.”

It additionally asserted that Lin did not have proof to assist a discovering that his historic analysis positioned him at such excessive threat for extreme sickness from COVID-19, and claimed that “as a producer of customized excessive voltage electrical gear, CGIT was deemed a vital infrastructure enterprise and didn’t have the posh of merely shutting down all in-person operations in response to COVID-19, as many different companies did.”

It added that if he had “merely returned to work on March 31 following his two-week stint of working from dwelling as an alternative of unilaterally deciding that he was not going to return till he felt it was protected, he wouldn’t have misplaced his job.”

Lin’s original complaint [PDF], filed in 2020, says he requested to work at home as a result of he was 55 “with a long-time hypertension medical drawback, and that he lived along with his mom, who was subjected to excessive threat of COVID-19.”

The case continues. ®