A former driver for Maine Recycling Corp. claims the Lisbon Falls company fired him because he blew the whistle on their violations of transportation laws.

Dell Briggs of Lisbon filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission in Augusta over his alleged unfair termination. An agency investigator sided with Briggs and recommended to the agency that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that discrimination has occurred.”

Under Maine law, employers are prohibited from retaliating against workers by firing, threatening or otherwise discriminating against them when those workers, acting in good faith, report to their employers or a public body what the workers reasonably believe is a violation of law or rule adopted under state law.

Briggs said he complained to MHRC that the company was breaking Department of Transportation laws when it told him he had to drive a 48-foot-long trailer more than 15 hours without break to Machias. The law requires drivers to keep log books when driving outside the 100-mile radius from the recycling center, the investigator’s report said.

Briggs said, “I told management on multiple occasions that I was not comfortable driving some of the routes they sent me on because I believed they were not legal,” he said. He also told the company’s management that he thought the DOT would be interested in knowing of the illegal routes the company directed some of the drivers to travel.

Asked if he was threatening the company, Briggs said he told them he wasn’t. He said he was told it would be “best for everyone, especially me, if I did not call DOT. I asked (the supervisor) if that meant my job was at risk if I called DOT, and he said that I could take it any way I wanted.”

Early the next month he was fired. He said managers told his former fellow workers things about him that harmed his reputation.

Several of the other drivers at the company were interviewed by the investigator. One confirmed Briggs’ account of being told to violate DOT rules; another said he witnessed Briggs complaining about the violations to management.

Officials at the company told investigators that Briggs never complained about DOT violations and was fired because of his “negative attitude and confrontational manner.”

They said Briggs had several problems at work, including taking an inspection sticker meant for a trailer on his windshield. He also was disciplined for looking at other workers’ timecards, the report said. Another incident involved his “excessive speed, endangering customers,” the company told investigators. Briggs also allegedly told his supervisor that another driver had drug paraphernalia in his truck.

Company officials said they gave Briggs routes to drive because he was financially strapped.

In his rebuttal, Briggs said he had requested extra hours, but not more than the maximum allowed by the DOT.

He told investigators that the company reprimanded him for complaining to his co-workers about the illegal hours required by the company.

In May 2009, he nearly had an accident when driving more than 15 hours without a break and loading and unloading his trailer.

As for the drug paraphernalia, Briggs said he wasn’t pointing the finger at the driver, who was a friend. He said the apparatus might have been used by the laborer who rode in the passenger seat.

Even after his firing, the company allegedly harassed him by taking out a trespass warning and telling police that Briggs had told a former coworker he planned to come back and take the keys out of the trucks.

The MHRC investigator, Michele Dion, concluded: “Based upon the facts presented, the employer’s proffered reason for terminating Mr. Briggs’ employment strains credulity and retaliation is found.”

The case is expected to go before the commission’s board later this month.