A Fullerton auto dealership fired a salesman for refusing to attend presentations urging employees not to vote for President Obama because of the Affordable Care Act, according to a suit filed in Orange County Superior Court.
Dietrich Seney also claims James Renick, the Renick Cadillac Subaru vice president, attached an anti-Obama message to workers' paychecks two weeks before the meeting and that when the salesman complained to the general manager he was told it was Obama's fault.
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No one at the dealership last night could speak about Seney's suit, which seeks lost wages and benefits and damages for wrongful firing, Labor Code violations, discrimination and pain and suffering.
Seney claims, through the help of Andrew Jones of Fresno's Wagner, Jones, Kopfman N Artenian, that he had been a salesman at Renick Cadillac Subaru for more than 2 1/2 years in late October 2012 when a “mandatory” meeting about employee taxes and health insurance was held on his day off. But Seney alleges he arrived to discover an insurance broker led the presentation that “put 'Obamacare' in a very negative light,” mere days before the Nov. 6 national vote that would result in the president's reelection.
“[T]he presenter said that one of the big problems was that it was passed by only one party, the Democrats,” according to the complaint. “The last line of the very last slide that was presented to the employee and Seney stated that the outcome of the 2012 election would have a huge impact on whether or not all of the changes (rate increases) would take effect. The message at the meeting was very clear: Vote for Obama and your health care costs will be higher.”
Seney states he was “very upset” when he complained about the meeting to his general manager, Sherry Hosmer, who is not named as a plaintiff in the suit. After Seney informed Hosmer he would not attend any more “politically motivated” meetings on his day off, he was fired, according to the complaint.
It was six days before Obama was reelected.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.