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Can we fire an employee who complains about discrimination and is dead wrong?
I mean, sure. It’s a free country. This isn’t Communist Russia.
But if your company is concerned about a subsequent retaliation claim, read on.
I mean, sure. It’s a free country. This isn’t Communist Russia.
But if your company is concerned about a subsequent retaliation claim, read on.
A director for a major transit authority applied for two internal promotions. She didn’t get either. Feeling that she was more qualified than either successful candidate, the director reported discrimination internally and later filed a Charge of Discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among other things, she alleged in the EEOC Charge that, after her internal report of discrimination, she experienced retaliation. For example, she alleged that he performance review scores went down, her workload increased, and some analysts no longer reported to her.
That’s not great. But, is it what the law considers “retaliation”?
On August 7, 2018, a worker sent an email. The email stated, “I fear retaliation” and “my colleagues and I have been the victims of continuous harassment, both sexual and emotional.”
On August 9, 2018, just two days later, the company fired her.
How do you think that turned out? Continue reading
The plaintiff in this federal court decision I read last night didn’t exactly come off as a model employee. Continue reading
If, like me, you deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, you’ve yelled the title of this blog post at others.
(And if you don’t deal with HR compliance and employment law issues regularly, dude, WTH are you doing here?) Continue reading
When a plaintiff sues, alleging a supervisor subjected them to a hostile work environment, the defendant may avoid liability — even if the harassment actually occurred — if it took prompt remedial action to protect the plaintiff. Also, if a plaintiff fails to take advantage of corrective opportunities the defendant provides, the defendant wins.
But not always. Continue reading
Employment lawyers and HR professionals generally preach that employees view “it’s not a good fit” to explain their termination of employment as code for discrimination or retaliation.
It’s HR101.
But yesterday, a federal court of appeals explained that this well-intentioned but often misconstrued rationale isn’t always a thinly-veiled, pretextual excuse to fire someone. Sometimes, people aren’t “good fits.” Continue reading
They were so bad that a federal judge applied a rarely-used rule of civil procedure to consider summary judgment on its own after identifying for the parties material facts that may not be genuinely in dispute.
Boy, that was about as witty as Groundskeeper Willie’s standup routine at Springfield Elementary.
(Note to self: take after the Clown.) Continue reading
I get that employee handbooks are not contacts and are subject to change and all that stuff. But, companies should be prepared to enforce any existing policy in an employee handbook as written.
A multi-billion-dollar company with an overly broad attendance policy learned this lesson the hard way recently. Continue reading