New Year's Resolutions to Stay Out of Court 01-04-2006
- By Rita Risser, attorney at law

Let's review the lessons learned from the major cases of 2005, so that you can make some New Year's Resolutions for your organization to systematically prevent lawsuits by creating a respectful workplace.

A common thread in many big cases last year was the failure of the Human Resources Department to stop clearly illegal behavior. For example, a 17 year old girl who worked for a pizza place was repeatedly, violently sexually assaulted by her co-workers, and HR simply gave the men verbal warnings to stop. A disabled employee was repeatedly harassed by her co-worker, and HR took no action.

Then there were the cases where employees and managers with excellent track records were summarily fired in retaliation for whistle-blowing. These, too, were in large organizations with extensive HR Departments, which were unable to stop the retaliation.

We also reported the good news - where HR did everything right and won the lawsuit.

So one Resolution for 2006 is to Empower HR and top management to vigorously enforce the law.

Another Resolution we need is to Stop Office Affairs. In 2005 we saw cases brought by women forced to have affairs with the boss, and by women who didn't get promoted because other women were sleeping with the boss. No surprise there. But we also had a case of a boss who slept with numerous women, then claimed THEY harassed him. When he was fired for his complaint, he was able to sue for retaliation. (And to those who say it's an invasion of privacy to try to stop office affairs, these cases prove that affairs are anything but private!)

2005 was a year to remind employers to adopt a Resolution to Be Proactive. One case required supervisors to report their manager's harassment to Human Resources or top management. And of course, California's managers remember the push to get them all trained in harassment prevention at the end of the year. The most significant case was a Court of Appeals decision upholding a jury verdict of almost $1 million. This case was allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court, and significantly expands the federal law to protect transsexuals against discrimination.

Empower HR, Stop Office Affairs, and Be Proactive - three good Resolutions to prevent employee lawsuits and create good places to work. And Fair Measures can help, through our training programs and HR consulting.

Better late than never. Have you met the California Harassment Compliance requirement yet? Call us today at 1-800-458-2778.

 

Information here is correct at the time it is posted. Case decisions cited here may be reversed. Please do not rely on this information without consulting an attorney first.