Hospital worker fired after refusing to wear paper lab coat

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She lost her job over a paper lab coat.

A Brooklyn woman says she was canned from her $18-an-hour gig at Coney Island Hospital after 27 years because she refused to wear the coat, which made her sick.

Pauline Bonnen, 60, of Sheepshead Bay had worn a cotton lab coat for her clerical job until July 2014, when her department instituted a policy requiring all employees to wear disposable paper lab coats.

“I started getting hives,” she said, adding that chemicals in the coat, like fire retardants, may have caused the allergic reaction.

“I stopped wearing the disposable in August 2014, and they left me alone till March 2015,” she said.

But her superiors started pressuring her to comply, so she went to a dermatologist.

The doctor confirmed it was an allergic reaction, according to a complaint she filed with the city Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to get her job back.

Her hospital bosses wouldn’t give in, although, she admitted, they did offer several “accommodations.”

One was that they would find another type of disposable coat, but Bonnen, a divorcée with a grown daughter, declined because she believed it wouldn’t make a difference, according to documents in the case.

They also allegedly offered to let her wear a cotton coat under the paper one. But she told them she couldn’t because she would get too hot and it could worsen her hypertension.

She began taking sick days for stress. The hospital accused her of going AWOL.

She was fired last August.

With no lawyer, she filed a complaint against NYC Health + Hospitals, which runs city hospitals and was formerly known as the Health and Hospitals Corp.

But the city dismissed her case in April, finding that as a provisional employee, she could be terminated at will.

“I got screwed,” she said.

Bonnen remains unemployed and scrapes by on welfare and food stamps. She said she sends out résumés daily but has had no luck finding a new job.

“I’m 60 years old. It’s not easy,” she said.

NYC Health + Hospitals said the coats are required for employees’ safety.

“We offered Ms. Bonnen several options to accommodate her needs and meet safety standards, but she rejected all the choices available to protect her safety,” a spokeswoman said.