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Retaliation

AWOL employee loses case involving absenteeism

04/01/2008
Rosa Luera worked as a medical records clerk and file technician at The Heart Center Medical Group in Fort Wayne. Luera’s attendance continued to decline—until one day, she simply stopped showing up for work. In June 2006, she was terminated. Luera sued, claiming discrimination and retaliation …

Build a legal wall against the flood of retaliation lawsuits

04/01/2008
Retaliation lawsuits are all the rage among employees (and their lawyers) these days. Employees filed 26,663 complaints of retaliation with the EEOC in 2007, up 18% from the previous year. One key reason is the landmark U.S. Supreme Court 2006 ruling in Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White …

Retaliation: The legal risk of ‘getting back’ at employees

04/01/2008
Most managers know that it’s against the law to discriminate against employees and applicants because of their race, gender, age, religion or disability. But you may not know that those same federal laws also make it illegal for employers and supervisors to retaliate in any way against employees who voice complaints about on-the-job discrimination.

Vanguard Group settles race discrimination suit

04/01/2008
Malvern-based Vanguard Group has agreed to pay $500,000 to settle an EEOC race discrimination case with Raymond Ross, a former information systems manager. In 2003, Ross filed two EEOC complaints. Vanguard fired him one day after the company received news of his second complaint …

Brace Yourself! Discrimination Claims Up Sharply

03/11/2008
Discrimination complaints in 2007 saw their largest annual increase since the early 1990s, as the EEOC reported double-digit percentage hikes in almost every kind of discrimination charge. Race discrimination continued to lead the field, but for the first time, retaliation was the second most common complaint. Will the new statistics embolden more employees—and their attorneys—to bring charges against you?

Afraid to discipline disabled employee? Just follow the rules

03/01/2008

Sometimes, it may feel like everyone in HR is walking on eggshells, especially when it comes to disciplining employees who say they have disabilities. It doesn’t have to be that way—if you have a comprehensive employee handbook and consistently follow it …

Tell supervisors: No paybacks for reporting harassment

03/01/2008

Even with the best sexual harassment training, it’s hard for some employees to grasp exactly what constitutes sexual harassment and what’s merely horseplay or roughhousing—especially when the behavior is directed at the same sex. But that doesn’t mean that an employee who comes forward with that sort of complaint isn’t engaged in protected activity …

No mandatory arbitration agreement if EEOC case is pending

03/01/2008

If, like many employers, you require arbitration to settle employment disputes instead of allowing costly court fights, be aware of a new danger. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently clarified that an employee’s refusal to sign an arbitration agreement when he already has a pending EEOC complaint is protected activity. Firing such an employee for refusing to sign is retaliation …

Listen for code words when evaluating discrimination complaints

03/01/2008
The law protects employees from retaliation for complaining about alleged job discrimination. That doesn’t mean, however, that employees have to state specifically that their concerns involve sex, race or some other protected characteristic. Something as simple as complaining about “the glass ceiling” may be enough to at least raise the specter of sex discrimination …

No longer adrift: Illinois retaliatory discharge claim applies on water, too

03/01/2008
Illinois law makes it retaliation to fire employees because they report dangerous or illegal activities at work—even if they are otherwise at-will employees who can be fired for any legal reason. That holds true even if those employees work on a river barge otherwise governed by federal admiralty laws …