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When employees complain, don’t retaliate!
By Lauren | November 11, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is filing an increasing number of lawsuits against employers for retaliating against employees who filed discrimination claims against them. Interestingly, in many of those cases the EEOC did not find that the employer had actually discriminated against the complaining employee. In other words, it wasn’t the employer’s initial conduct that generated the EEOC’s lawsuit - it was the way the employer reacted when it learned that an employee had complained.
According to the Journal, EEOC claims including a retaliation charge rose 23% in the year ending September 30, 2008, while claims that didn’t involve retaliation rose only 12% in the same period. Some of the difference may be that the recession has led more employers to look for ways to cut their payroll. If an employee has filed a discrimination claim with the EEOC, it can be tempting to “solve” the problem by putting that problem employee on the pink slip list. But firing, demoting or reassigning an employee who’s filed a complaint creates a separate basis for suit if the EEOC finds that the employment decision was made to punish that employee for complaining.
Like it or not, employee who believe they’ve been discriminated against have a legal right to complain to the government, and their employers are not allowed to punish them for exercising that right. Yes, managers are human too, and can legitimately become angry if they believe an employee’s complaint was dishonest or unfair. But that anger can’t drive retaliatory action against the employee. If one of your employees complains of discrimination, swallow your feelings, treat that employee fairly, and save yourself and your company a trip to court.
To read the Wall Street Journal article, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125470380636663209.html
Topics: Business Ethics, Risk Management, corporate responsibility, ethics |