Two lawyers who represent employees have responded to our request for comments made in our recent post entitled “Zero Tolerance” And “Broken Windows?”
And for the most part they are not that keen on the idea of a “zero tolerance” policy, for reasons which they describe below. But they rightly note that the issues raised
A couple of early comments to our “Zero Tolerance” post earlier this week drew our attention because of the insights shared. We think that these two comments can be a central point around which an educational discussion/debate can coalesce.
Lisa Hutchin, Contractor – Labor Relations in Sacramento, CA:
“I think we can have
“Zero Tolerance” – is it an ambiguous term, we asked recently? Is it a synonym for “non-thinking,” as one reader suggested?
Should it be reserved for serious violations? Does “one size not fit all?”
New Racial Harassment Case
On October 4th, we posted about a new EEOC Title VII race and national origin harassment lawsuit
The EEOC has just sued a major transportation and distribution services provider from New Jersey for harassment based on race and national origin under Title VII.
This comes after a week of many such racial harassment suits filed by the EEOC.
In this case the EEOC accused company management of using “racial language” such as
Comes now a newly effective law in the Channel Island of Jersey – the first anti-discrimination law there and 13 years in the making. It only covers race for now, but “it is expected that sex, age and disability will follow.”
And the terrible anxiety has just begun.
The first that we heard of this
Reuters reported yesterday that the EEOC has just sued a pawn shop chain in Brooklyn and Queens (that’s NYC), owned by a convicted fence known as “Fat Frank.” The EEOC alleged that he fired five female employees after they complained that he called virtually all of the 40 female employees, who are mostly Hispanic, racial
“How do we square these two rulings”?
We asked this question on May 15th apropos a new decision from a three-judge federal appeals court panel sitting in Virginia which ruled that an employee’s calling the African-American plaintiff a “porch monkey” on two occasions did not constitute a hostile work environment. After all, it was
On February 4, 2013 we said that juries do not like nooses or the N-word in the workplace. This was in the context of a verdict by a North Carolina federal jury which deliberated for only one hour before awarding $200,000 in compensatory and punitive damages against a trucking company on behalf of two former
On May 28th we did a post entitled “Does One N-Word, One Sexual Assault, Plus Four Other Harassing Incidents In “Eleven Days At Most” Create a Hostile Work Environment?” We discussed a number of court cases which we found difficult to reconcile, each of which seemingly revolved around the quantum of incidents necessary to
We have written before about the US EEOC targeting employers who are alleged to have harassed and/or discriminated against “the most vulnerable” workers, such as farm and non-English speaking workers, intellectually disabled workers (remember Henry’s Turkey?), teens, and female workers located in remote areas. In short, places where there are low