Forklift operator says Unilever let him go three days after ER trip
Three days after a forklift operator left work for an ER visit tied to a workplace foot injury, Unilever allegedly fired him.
That is the account laid out in Salazar v. Unilever Manufacturing (US), LLC, No. 2:26-cv-04081, filed April 20, 2026 in the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri. The lawsuit accuses Unilever Manufacturing (US), LLC of disability discrimination, failing to accommodate a worker with Type-1 diabetes, and retaliating against him for exercising rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Missouri's workers' compensation law. Unilever has not yet responded, and nothing in the case has been decided.
According to the filing, Zachariah Salazar started at Unilever's Jefferson City, Missouri plant in June 2024, working the second shift — 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. — as a forklift operator loading pallets onto semi-trucks. On December 13, 2024, he says he slammed his right foot into an unguarded machine part. He reported the injury right away, the filing says, but Unilever allegedly did not notify its workers' compensation carrier or the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations until March 5, 2025. Missouri law gives employers five days.
That delay, Salazar alleges, left him continuing to work without authorized medical treatment for nearly three months, until the carrier finally cleared him to see a doctor on March 11, 2025. The physician wanted an MRI before...
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