2007 New Year's Resolutions to Stay Out of Court 01-10-2007
- By Rita Risser, attorney at law

Let's review the lessons learned from the major cases of 2006, so that you can make some New Year's Resolutions for your organization to systematically prevent lawsuits by creating a respectful workplace.

2006 was the year the U. S. Supreme Court expanded the definition of retaliation. In the past, employees could sue only when major actions were taken against them, such as firing. Now they can sue for any action they don't like, including changing their job duties. Another Court of Appeals case expanded retaliation by allowing employees to prove it with circumstantial evidence. They don't need a "smoking gun" to make their case. We also saw several cases this year where employees brought cases of harassment and retaliation, lost the harassment case but won on retaliation.

So our first resolution is to prevent retaliation and Implement Fair Policies and Procedures. In all of the cases, either the company did not have a policy in place (for reporting retaliation, for example) or did not follow its policies (for investigating harassment complaints or for terminating employees.) Another resolution is to Audit Exempt Pay Practices. This past year was significant for the tech industry, which has been under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor for failing to pay overtime to employees treated as exempt. IBM settled a class action suit for $65 million for nearly 32,000 current and former technical services professionals and information technology specialists. Siebel Systems settled one for $27.5 million for more than 800 workers who had job titles such as "software engineer" and "senior software engineer," and El Segundo-based Computer Sciences settled a suit by 30,000 employees for $24 million.

A common theme in cases this year as in other years is to Be Proactive. UPS was ordered to hire deaf drivers with proven safe driving records. Managers were required to take all steps necessary to stop harassment of employees by outsiders. In a case involving a man who the company knew posted to child porn web sites from work, the court held the employer had a duty to report him to the police. Finally, a company lost a harassment case because it did not have an effective anti-harassment training program.

Implement Fair Policies and Procedures, Audit Exempt Pay Practices, 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.

2007 is a new year for complying with California's mandatory harassment training for supervisors. Check out our all new webinar and e-learning.

 

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.