An employer recently learned the hard way that a proper response to an employee’s complaint of harassment involves more than simply investigating it.
I’ll explain. Continue reading
Suppose an employee gets fired after complaining about sexual harassment at work. If that person later claims retaliation, they will have to establish a nexus between the two events, and the complaint also arises to the level of what we call a “protected activity.” Continue reading
Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I read a recent NJ federal court decision where a plaintiff began working for the defendant in New Jersey but later requested and received a transfer to Pennsylvania.
And that’s when things went awry. Continue reading
There are all sorts of anti-retaliation laws that protect employees. Many require that employees who invoke them prove that the employer acted with retaliatory intent.
But not all of them.
A university professor did not have her employment contract renewed after two years on the job.
Why not? Continue reading
On Monday, three House Republicans and three House Democrats reintroduced the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (POWADA), billed as a bipartisan proposal to strengthen anti-discrimination protections for older workers.
Suppose that several employees complain that a coworker is creating a “hostile work environment” because they were afraid that she (the coworker) was going to report them (the employees) for engaging in unspecified misconduct in the workplace.
Can the employer respond by mandating an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) referral as a condition of the coworker’s continued employment?
A tenured professor in a university’s history department learns of “discrimination” and “marginalization” of Hispanic employees within the department. The university appoints him to an “Equity Committee” to address the problem. As part of his remediation efforts, the professor creates a “salary report” confirming instances of pay disparity among minority professors. He then circulates the report to colleagues and supervisors.
Will the professor have a viable retaliation claim if the university later takes against the professor because of the salary report?
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