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My Microskills Court Case

In March 2004, I worked as a enrolment counselor for Microskills, under the management of Bart Richmond (not his real name). I was reasonably successful at it and at one stage, my immediate superior, Alex Emralino, declared that I was "setting records for a new person" in respect to my sales.

Even under oath in the following court case, Bart Richmond (not his real name) conceded that I was "about average" in my job performance . So in no way could it be considered that the events that were to transpire were based on my failed performance in sales. And for any of you who are in any doubt, enrolment counselor at a private vocational college is a "sales" job.

I had some issues with the way that they did business, and I spoke up about it. Subsequently I was fired. California is an "at will" employment state and no reason has to be given for a termination, however I asked Bart for one and he declined to tell me.

I sued the company, and that case has recently come to a close so I feel at liberty to discuss the case and some of what transpired before I left Microskills.

Federal Do Not Call

The first thing that came to my attention, especially since I came from a background (in the student loan industry) that was extremely sensitive to compliance with the law was that Microskills did not seem to have an awareness of the implications of the Federal Do Not Call legislation.

They didn't understand that if they don't have a business relationship with a person and that person is listed on the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call (DNC) list, then it is not legal to call that person to solicit a sale from them. Microskills was calling people who had contacted them in the past directly or indirectly. However, many of these were stale leads that were over three months old. In this case, if those persons are on the DNC list, then Microskills cannot call them.

I spoke to Bart Richmond (not his real name) about this, and under oath in the hearing, I stated that he said to me "Oh, but we are not calling them to sell them something, we are calling them to make an appointment to sell them something". This activity is still against the law.

Under oath the next day during the hearing, when asked if he had ever said that, he replied that he had never said it.

Using Misleading Labor Statistics

I love researching to get better at my job and understand the industry that I am in, so I was interested to find out a little more about the statistics that we were giving the potential students.

We were showing them in the enrolment presentations statistics from the Federal Government that showed that Computer Network Engineers were in the top ten occupations in demand. However, these statistics were from 2002, so I determined to find out what the stats were for 2004. I did, and I found that the statistics that were the latest available demonstrated that what Microskills was training for was not actually in that sort of demand. If you were a janitor you would actually be better off as far as finding work.

I emailed Joy Richmond, Bart's wife (not their real names) and the marketing person at Microskills to let her know. She acknowledged that email, and a couple of days later, Bart came to my desk and I showed him the current statistics. I told him that I wouldn't be using them.

Under oath in the hearing, I stated that the discussion about the use of outdated employment statistics was during the last week of my employment.

In the absence of any smoking gun document from Bart Richmond (not his real name) saying "let's fire Paul because he won't shut up about possible violations of the law", we had to establish a connection between my "whistle blowing" and my termination. The best way to do this was to show that they were chronologically proximate. We really only had circumstantial evidence.

Under oath in the hearing, Bart declared that the discussion about those statistics was way before my firing, at the beginning of my tenure with Microskills.

We did have partial e-mail evidence to the effect that the discussion had taken place in the same week as I was fired. And I said that was the case under oath as well. Contrary to Microskills' assertion that they keep every e-mail that transits their server, they were unable to provide a full accounting of the e-mails in that interchange.

Shortly afterwards I was fired. I attempted to obtain the commission owed to me by Microskills via the State of California's Division of Labor Standard Enforcement. Microskills management did not like the idea of paying me any money so we had to sue them.

Microskills Court Case continued