Former Weather Channel anchor Nicole Mitchell suing network
A former Weather Channel anchor is suing the network, claiming her status as an Air Force reserve officer got her fired.
Nicole Mitchell said this week her contract was not renewed in 2010 because Weather Channel management did not want to contend with the time she took off for her military duties, the Marietta Daily Journal reported.
Photo/Nicole Mitchell Facebook page
Mitchell is now suing the Weather Channel and its parent companies for violating her rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994.
“If you had a minority that was being harassed, harassed, harassed and then all of a sudden was let go, oh we don’t have a reason why, it was just a business reason, you know, you would look at that history and say, well if that’s the only thing that the employer ever had to complain about, this is what it is,” Mitchell told the Glenn Beck show.
Mitchell, who holds the rank of captain, said there were never any major issues until the Weather Channel was sold in 2008 to NBC Universal and private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group.
“We’d had some scheduling challenges from time to time, but I never felt like my job was in peril or I’d never had statements like, ‘This impacts everyone’ — basically that my military service was inconvenient to them,” she said.
“I don’t think it was so much they were anti-military,” Mitchell said after a news conference June 4th at her attorney’s office, a couple of miles from the Weather Channel’s headquarters. “But we were taken over by outside companies that weren’t internally managing, if that makes sense. And so they never got to know some of us. Our managers weren’t meteorologists anymore, so I think it was just easier for them to feel inconvenienced than to look at the benefits.”
