‘Heartless Acts’: Abrupt Klausner Lumber Closure Robbed Employees of FMLA, Pandemic Leave Protections, Lawsuit Says

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A proposed class action alleges Klausner Lumber unlawfully “shirked” its duty to provide stateside employees with federally backed economic and health protections at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic when it abruptly pulled the plug on its American operations in March 2020. 

The plaintiff alleges in the 12-page lawsuit that he and his family, as well as roughly 150 other employees and their families, were devastated when defendants Klausner Lumber One and Klausner Lumber Two, in an apparent response to an anticipated uptick in health- and family-related leave requests, rounded up its Austrian executive team and “abandoned the hardworking American laborers,” who reportedly showed up to work on March 18 and were greeted by a “PLANT CLOSED” sign. 

According to the case, Klausner interfered with employees’ rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and/or the FMLA-related leave provisions outlined in the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, emergency legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on March 14 aimed at protecting American workers.

“On March 17, 2020, in direct response to the impending increased employee protections in the United States and/or based on the increasing amount of health and family requests, Klausner abruptly pulled the plug on its American operations,” the complaint, filed in Florida federal court, says. “Klausner shirked its duty to provide its American employees with the required economic and health protections during this critical medical crisis.” 

With an executive team comprised entirely of Austrian nationals, Klausner opened its first facility in the United States in 2013 in Live Oak, Florida, the lawsuit says. Per the suit, Klausner’s executives provided management at its U.S. facilities with “little to no advisement as to the corporate financial status,” and rolled out an aggressive growth plan in the country while refusing to take into account the health and welfare of their American workforce. 

“These Austrian executives sought to increase the bottom line for the Austrian company and the executives in Austria alone,” the lawsuit alleges, claiming Klausner execs routinely failed to act in the best interest of American workers, at times failing to pay certain wages and remunerative benefits.

The plaintiff, who signed on with Klausner as the shift lead for mobile maintenance in November 2017, was a “highly regarded” employee who eventually earned a management position, the lawsuit says. The suit describes the plaintiff as a family man with a wife and two kids and elderly parents whose medical needs the plaintiff took care of. As the COVID-19 crisis developed in January, the plaintiff informed Klausner management of the need to care for himself and his family members due to the virus, the lawsuit says. 

Under the emergency FMLA-leave provisions of the FFCRA, an employer with fewer than 500 employees is required to grant all eligible workers paid sick leave, with only a few exceptions allowable by law, according to the suit. For instance, the law guarantees an employee sick leave in the event that the worker is quarantined or if a doctor advises the individual to take sick leave, or instances in which the employee will care for a child, the case relays. By law, an employer must pay a qualified employee a per-day wage, cannot require the individual to relinquish rights to accrued paid time off, and must “attend to the financial needs of the employee” during their time of health and family-related stress, the lawsuit says.

According to the complaint, Klausner, with approximately 150 employees between its Live Oak, Florida and Rocky Mount, North Carolina offices, closed up shop in the United States at a time when employees and their families could least afford it. From the case: 

“Plaintiff and his family are devastated. Where under the new protections of the FMLA, Plaintiff could care for his children, family and himself, now, because of Klausner’s heartless acts, he and his fellow employees were deprived of the much needed protections of the new law, and he no longer can take care of himself or his family during this national health crisis.”

The suit asserts that Klausner is considered an employer for the purposes of the FMLA in that the company employed 50 or more workers for each working day during each of 20 or more calendar workweeks in the current or preceding calendar year.

Back on March 21, Klausner was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit that alleged the company ran afoul of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by closing up shop without providing 60 days’ notice, a mandate for employers of a certain size. Echoing the suit detailed on this page, the March complaint also charged that Klausner “evacuated its foreign management team to Austria” while leaving American workers high and dry at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

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