Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission --
Summary of Wisconsin Court Decision relating to Unemployment Insurance

Subject: Julie Burdick v. LIRC and Phillips Plastics Corporation, Case 02-CV-215 (Wis. Cir. Ct., Dunn Co., January 7, 2003)

Digest Codes: VL 1005

The employee reported to her employer, that she was being harassed by some of her co-workers, who were making comments regarding her sexual orientation. The employer investigated the matter, but it received conflicting reports from some employees and considered its investigation inconclusive. Nevertheless the employee was allowed to extend a medical leave she was on in order to postpone returning to the situation she had complained about, and after several weeks when she returned to work she was then allowed to transfer to a comparable position in a different department, with different co-workers and supervisors. A few days after resuming her employment in that position, however, the employee quit without notice or warning, asserting later that she had again been harassed in that department. The department determined that she had quit, not within any exception, and an ALJ and then LIRC affirmed, concluding that while the employee had earlier been subjected to sexual harassment by co-workers, her employer took reasonable steps to address the problem and the employee did not thereafter give the employer a reasonable opportunity to address the new problems that arose in the department the employee transferred to. By failing to inform the employer of the new problems she encountered and to allow it to attempt to address them, the employee failed to pursue a reasonable alternative to quitting; therefore, her quitting was not with good cause attributable to the employer. The employee appealed, arguing that she had good cause to quit because of the continuation of the sexual harassment.

Held: LIRC's decision is affirmed. There is no evidence to support the inference, that the employer should have known that harassment was likely to occur in the new position to which it allowed the employee to transfer. Thus, while sexual harassment did occur initially, LIRC reasonably decided that the employee did not have good cause to quit after returning to work in a different department and experiencing further harassment which she did not report to the employer.

Please note that this is a summary prepared by staff of the commission, not a verbatim reproduction of the court decision.

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