San Francisco Employment Law Blog

Many California residents work in competitive environments. There may only be a few positions available at a particular place of employment, or only employees in certain roles will obtain particular benefits. As a result, it can take a lot of hard work to be promoted to one of those positions. Unfortunately, the feeling of accomplishment that may come with a promotion may be short lived if workplace harassment takes place.

"Workplace mobbing" is a term used for group bullying that occurs at places of employment. Typically, several other employees may bully someone in an important position or who simply performs his or her job well in efforts to get that person to leave the job. While bullying itself is not necessarily an action that is specifically against the law, harassment is.

You undoubtedly know that if you report workplace discrimination to your California company’s management and/or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, federal law forbids your employer to fire you or retaliate against you in any other discriminatory manner. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 strictly prohibits such adverse employment actions.

While some adverse employment actions, such as termination, are easy to spot, other kinds of retaliatory discrimination are subtler and not always recognized for what they are. For instance, your employer likewise cannot retaliate against you by means of any of the following:

• Reduce or threaten to reduce your salary or wages
• Reassign your work duties to other employees
• Take away your supervisory responsibilities
• Examine your work excessively
• Threaten to report you or one of your family members to immigration authorities
• Criticize you in public, especially in the media

California protects employees who serve as volunteer emergency responders and are called into action during natural disasters.

While most California residents undoubtedly want to feel joyous anticipation when they find out they are expecting a child, they may also have less happy feelings. In particular, working women may worry that their employers will treat them unfairly due to their conditions. While pregnancy issues often do not prevent women from working entirely, some employers do not feel the need to provide the necessary accommodations.

It was recently reported that multiple legal claims have been made in another state against Walmart. Two women indicated that they were fired from their jobs after they took time off of work to attend to pregnancy-related medical conditions. Walmart issued a statement in response to the claims which stated that they do not condone discrimination and deny the claims made against the company.