Case 10:

The Human Resources Specialist

Part I

 You are a Human Resources Specialist and work for a staffing services company.  Early Monday morning you receive a phone call from one of your most important clients.  They want to get rid of one of your assignment employees. (An assignment employee is a temporary employee from your company.)  The employee has been absent for several days; she is pregnant.  She has been working as a banking receptionist, a position that requires consistent attendance and a cheerful disposition toward bank clients.

 You discuss the legal consequences attendant on firing or reassigning a pregnant employee; this includes possibilities such as a wrongful dismissal and an anti-discrimination suit.  But your client is not receptive to this.  He responds by asking you if you can think of a legal way to "get around" these problems

Questions:

1. What should you do?  Identify and evaluate the alternatives of action?

Part II

 You call the Human Resources Manager at the bank's headquarters and discuss the issue with him.  "I would like to avoid having to reassign the employee," you tell him.  He tells you he will investigate the situation further and get back to you.

 A few minutes later, he calls back.  The branch manager where the employee works said that the employee was not doing adequate work.  She was not helpful and courteous to coworkers.  She was not courteous toward clients who came into the bank or toward those who called.  The branch manager's position was clear: she was a poor employee and they wanted her out.

Questions:

1. Is the bank's HRM's response trustworthy or is he providing a spurious rationale for getting rid of the employee, one like the branch manager wanted from you?

2. Given the response from the bank's HR manager, what should you do?  What are the alternatives?  What are your obligations?  How should you go about resolving this situation?