Opinion
January 5, 1983.
Unemployment compensation — Wilful misconduct — Dress code — Sex discrimination.
1. An employe discharged for refusal to comply with an employer's dress code is properly found to have been discharged for wilful misconduct precluding her receipt of unemployment compensation benefits, and the imposition of such a code establishing different requirements for men and women employes is not unlawfully discriminatory when reasonably related to a legitimate purpose of the employer. [40]
Submitted on briefs November 18, 1982, to Judges BLATT, WILLIAMS, JR. and CRAIG, sitting as a panel of three.
Appeal, No. 1463 C.D. 1981, from the Order of the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review in case of In Re: Claim of Glynnis R. Gradwell, No. B-194917.
Application with the Office of Employment Security for unemployment compensation benefits. Benefits denied. Applicant appealed to the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review. Denial affirmed. Applicant appealed to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Held: Affirmed.
Glynnis Gradwell, petitioner, for herself.
Richard Lengler, Associate Counsel, with him Richard L. Cole, Jr., Chief Counsel, for respondent.
The claimant has appealed from a denial of benefits by the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review on the basis that the termination of the claimant's employment by her photo-finishing company employer was for willful misconduct, in that the claimant, after repeated warnings, three times violated the employer's dress code, which required female sales employees, including the claimant, to wear a uniform tunic and trouser pants, while requiring male sales employees to wear a supplied blue shirt and tie with their own "dress" pants.
The claimant's functional complaints about the required uniform — the absence of pantsuit pockets and the impossibility of changing clothes on the job — provide no justification for her defiance of the employer's requirement.
With no facts in dispute, the only substantial issue of law is whether or not the dress code requirements discriminated against women employees, in view of the differences in the employer's clothing requirements between the sexes. Classification as to the dress required of men and women employees, if reasonably related to the employer's legitimate purposes, would not constitute improper discrimination. Cf. Carroll v. Talman Federal Savings and Loan Association, 604 F.2d 1028 (7th Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 929 (1980). Also, see Britz v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review (No. 1170 C.D. 1978, filed June 4, 1979), in this court, upholding a classification based upon worker group, not gender. Here the dress classification, a rational one, was reasonably related to the employer's apparent goal of achieving a general level of uniformity in appearance.
We therefore affirm the decision.
ORDER
NOW, January 5, 1983, the decision of the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, No. B-194917, dated May 1, 1981, is affirmed.