Under Ohio’s unemployment compensation decisions, the Unemployment Compensation Act “does not exist to protect employees from themselves, but to protect them from economic forces over which they have no control. When an employee is at fault, he is no longer the victim of fortune’s whims, but is instead directly responsible for his own predicament. Fault on the employee’s part separates him from the Act’s intent and the Act’s protection. Thus, fault is essential to the unique chemistry of a just cause termination.”
Fault on an employee’s part is an essential component of a just cause termination. Fault, however, is not limited to willful or heedless disregard of a duty or a violation of an employer’s instructions. Id. at 698. Unsuitability for a position constitutes fault sufficient to support a just-cause discharge. “An employer may properly find an employee unsuitable for the required work, and thus to be at fault, when: (1) the employee does not perform the required work, (2) the employer made known its expectations of the employee at the time of hiring, (3) the expectations were reasonable, and (4) the requirements of the job did not change substantially since the date of the original hiring for that particular position.The Court found that the claimant was aware of the LISW requirement when she accepted the position and was not treated unfairly. As for the argument that the LISW requirement was not evenly applied, the Court found that the other two employees were not similarly situated since they had been hired years earlier and had more experience. Moreover, the employer demonstrated that the only other program manager hired (before the claimant but after the other two program managers) had been similarly required to obtain her LISW certification as a condition of the promotion.
As the review commission noted, a company is entitled to increase the educational requirements for employment opportunities. Nothing in the record shows that the requirement — to obtain LISW certification within 15 months — was an unreasonable expectation or that other individuals were contemporaneously hired as program managers and were not required to obtain LISW certification. Thus, even if we were to adopt a requirement that any company policy must be fair and fairly applied before a termination for failure to follow that policy is deemed a just-cause determination, there is competent, credible evidence upholding the review commission’s decision that [Claimant’s] termination was for just cause.
The parties’ oral argument is available for viewing on the Supreme Court’s website.
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