San Francisco Employment Law Firm Blog
One of the challenging in proving the workplace retaliation claim against an employee is showing a nexus – a connection between the employee’s protected activity and the adverse employment action taken by the employer against the same employee. The employer will almost always deny retaliation and will always argue that the employee was terminated for reasons that have nothing to do with his disability or his complaints about discrimination/harassment. It is therefore crucial that the claimant has a solid evidence to establish that he complained and that those complaints were actually received by the employer.
This means that if you feel that you are subjected to discrimination and/or harassment, you complain to your supervisor or to the HR department in writing, so that later – the employer cannot deny the very fact that you actually complained. Whether it’s an e-mail, a handwritten note or a formal letter – written evidence of complaining about possibly unlawful conduct is much harder to refute than the “he said / she said” situations.