Help Wanted: Is this boss being vengeful?

DEAR CARRIE: My daughter has worked as a special-education teacher for more than two years. She would have been eligible for tenure in the fall. She loves her job and thought it was safe because her school has open positions for people with her expertise.

But she has a personality conflict with the new principal. As a result, she's had to go to meetings with the principal and a union representative. But he has never placed any complaints in her personnel file. And the principal doesn't know what she's like as a teacher because while he has arranged numerous appointments to observe her in class, he has yet to show up.

So she was caught off-guard when she was summoned to a meeting and the principal told her she was being fired because "it just wasn't a good fit anymore."

He gave her two options for leaving: If she resigned, she would receive a good recommendation. But if she maintains she was fired and applies for unemployment benefits, she would not get a recommendation. The union said that it couldn't do anything since she isn't tenured and that the school didn't have to have a reason to fire her. How can the principal blackmail her as far as getting a letter of recommendation? Is the union correct that she can be fired for any reason since she isn't tenured? And can she save her job or at least fight for it? -- Concerned Mom

DEAR CONCERNED: For answers, I turned to an attorney who represents employees, Alan L. Sklover, senior partner of Sklover & Donath, a Manhattan-based law firm, and author of "Fired, Downsized, or Laid Off -- What your employer does not want you to know about how to fight back" (Henry Holt and Co., 2000).

Whether your daughter's employment can be terminated without a good reason given to her, depends on language in the union's contract with the school district, he said.

"It is common for union contracts to permit nonrenewal of nontenured teachers without a specified reason," Sklover said. "But it is not universal. The teacher's union should know the union contract quite well, and we must expect the union reps to be honest in their advice."

So Sklover suggests that your daughter contact the union's legal department and ask for a definitive legal opinion on this issue.

As for the principal forcing your daughter to choose between unemployment benefits and a recommendation, the strategy strikes Sklover as, well, unprincipled.

"This principal is not acting like a professional, but more like a thug," he said. "I highly recommend that the teacher report him to the school board, and to the Nassau County District Attorney, for what he is doing is the textbook definition of extortion."

What's more, he added, "Common sense and simple logic cannot be avoided: Either this teacher deserves a good recommendation or she does not; and either this teacher has a legal right to unemployment benefits, or she does not. She has every right to ask for both, and both should be given to her -- if she deserves them. But to tie the two together is at the very least improper and unprofessional, or more probably, 100 percent illegal."

Though standing up for her rights won't be easy, Sklover suggests that your daughter do just that by writing to the board and maybe even the district attorney and sending the correspondence by FedEx or UPS.

"I would strongly encourage this teacher to respectfully insist upon an immediate -- and honest -- review of the whole matter," he said. "Based on the fact that the principal has never observed this teacher, and based on the principal's poor judgment in this matter, it would seem that this principal may very well be acting out of personal spite, or some other improper, unfair motive."