One of the challenges of proving retaliation at workplace in cases where an employee was fired shortly after submitting a harassment/discrimination/safety violation complaint against his/her supervisor or co-workers is showing that the employer knew about the complaint before making the decision to terminate an employee. After all, if the employer…
Many large companies have “no fault” attendance policies, where an employee gets a point or half a point for every absence or for being late regardless of the reason for that. Often these kinds of attendance policies are part of the negotiated bargaining agreement between the union and the employer.…
Requesting a reasonable accommodation to your disability is an important step to protecting your rights at workplace. Whether your disability or medical condition has developed over time (such as carpal tunnel syndrome) or resulted from an industrial accident, it’s important to keep several important things in mind to avoid the…
Having been prosecuting discrimination and retaliation claims for a while now, I am naturally curious to get into the minds of those managers who retaliate or discriminate against employees who are disabled or who suffered an on-the-job injury (and filed a workers compensation claim). Recently, during a conversation with an…
I get at least a few calls a week where an employee complains to me about being treated unfairly at workplace. these complaints range from being given more challenging and time consuming tasks than co-workers to being yelled at by the manager to being micromanaged and written up for every…
A mean supervisor who uses or abuses his power and authority in obvious or more subtle ways that none of the workers like, but many have to put up with, at least until the solution to the problem is found, such as transferring to a different department, have a manager…
I almost feel like the word “harassment” is the wrong term of the legal claim entitled “harassment at workplace” in the legal world because its legal meaning is so different from the meaning of the word in the ordinary, day-to-day life. Under the law, an actionable claim for harassment /…
Generally, a claimant is not qualified to receive unemployment benefits if she voluntarily resigns from her employment, unless there is “good cause” for quitting. Good cause must be a significant and compelling circumstance that makes is increasingly difficult or impracticable for an employee to continue working. In a recent case…
Some Employers seem to conveniently believe that replacing an older worker with a younger woman who has less seniority and therefore can be paid less is not against the law and is not considered age discrimination, since they believe they have a valid reason for that kind of replacement –…
On March 22, 2011, the United States Supreme Court published an important opinion on retaliation law, holding that oral as well as written complaints about wage and labor law violations are protected activities as far as retaliatory discipline or firing go. In Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. the plaintiff…