EMPLOYER DISCRIMINATION; EVIDENCE OF UNLAWFUL MOTIVATION; NEXUS – Departure from Past Practices or Procedures

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Supervisor deviated from his established procedures with Charging Parties when he initiated a disciplinary investigation. We may infer unlawful motive from a respondent’s departure from existing practices in its dealings with the charging party. To establish such an inference, the charging party must demonstrate what the respondent’s practice is and how the respondent deviated from that practice. Here, supervisor had a practice of reviewing plumbers’ time entries and on-call punches daily, making edits as necessary. He regularly made edits because of plumbers’ errors and did not initiate discipline for such errors. Instead, he contacted plumbers to reconcile inconsistencies in their time records and correct mistakes. Thus, supervisor broke with his customary practice when he did not contact Charging Parties about their unusual timecard punches to ask why they had punched call-back twice. This is probative of unlawful motive because supervisor had good reason to know that there were unusual circumstances and confusion on the hectic days in question, immediately following Thanksgiving. (pp. 23-24.)