A Philadelphia mother ready to return to work after giving her son a kidney finds out she doesn’t have a job to return to. Claudia Rendon didn’t hesitate when her son needed one of her kidneys.
But she didn’t think she’d have to choose between her child and her job. She needed a leave of absence to donate her kidney to her son but
before she left, she says her boss made her sign a paper, saying her job would not be guaranteed.
Sure enough, late last week, her supervisor at Aviation Institute Of Maintenance told her he’d hired someone else.
News media tried to find out why the Aviation Institute Of Maintenance fired someone the company itself describes as a good employee. The company had the right to terminate her employment under FMLA, or the Family Medical Leave Act. FMLA covers an employee for 12 weeks and Rendon took off less time than that. But she also worked for a small company with under 50 employees, and those companies operate under different FMLA rules.
A company representative also said it was in its legal rights to let Rendon go.
