I was denied unemployment by my company (Two big negatives for me.They are self-insured & I live in Ohio which is an at will' state and employers can fire you without any reason at all). I am hoping anyone can give me advice on how I can fight it? I've already appealed twice and have my phone hearing next week. I had a work related injury last year. Immediately following this injury my manager started harassing me horribly making my life miserable. She began pulling me in her office every week for five weeks straight writing me up for for things that were false. Even when I confronted her, her only response was "Well, signing this isn't an admission of guilt it's only acknowledging that you recieved a copy of this !". By the way, she has a friend in Human Resources so I'm sure she was coached all along. To say the least, I was denied unemployment because she supposedly 'documented' the supposed events. Although alot of people at work are very upset at how badly she 'wronged' me nobody at work will testify on my behalf because they are all afraid to lose their jobs and they already know there is no confidentiality with their HR Dept because I called before any 'write-ups' began because I was concerned about her sudden change in attitude towards me. THEN the write-ups began after she told me "I hear you've been talking about me? I hear everything...EVERYTHING gets back to me!" in a very angry tone. Some of the days she's using against me as unscheduled PTO days she told me to go ahead and take off. You see - my brother became very ill, was in ICU and put on a ventilator. She told me to go be with my brother that family was more important when I asked "what about work? who will work my shifts?". She used the days we had to make the horrible decision to remove him from life support when she told me to take them off and not worry about work. My brother passed away 3/4/08. I also asked for a leave of absence that she approved. In the meanwhile, she had already offered my job to her friend who needed her job back. (She quit a year previous when she got married - she was now getting a divorce!) Her friend was working in my position, in my office...already packed up for me weeks BEFORE I was notified I was terminated. How do I defend this because she made it look like she was 'documenting' a continuous problem? Is there anything I can do that will help on my telephone hearing next week since I can't get anyone to back me up? So far I've been screwed over on my work related injury because she lied about the date that she knew I was injured. When I asked her if I needed to fill anything out she said "no, everything is taken care of". She then referred me to one of our hospital drs that was NOT BWC qualified so my exam and any evidence he found would not be admissable. Thank God he was honest with me. He knows my Manager as well and was surprised why she sent me to him. Looking back, she was intentionally stalling. She has been in management and worked for the company for 10 years so she definitely should have known who to send me to. Anyone out there have any advice at all? I am one step away from being homeless at this point...