Law Office of Arkady Itkin / Tel. 916-720-0100 / e-mail: arkady@arkadylaw.com
As the Supreme Court recently pointed out, one “good” way to discourage an employee from bringing discrimination or harassment charges would be to insist that he spend more time performing the more arduous duties and less time performing those tasks that are easier or more agreeable to that employee. This is presumably why the EEOC Read More …
Sometimes employers offer severance to an employee who is to be laid off due to reduction in force or for any other reason, and ask that employee to sign the document certifying that he/she is resigning, rather than being laid off or terminated in exchange for severance. The employee is under the impression that resignation Read More …
Many of the medical conditions and disabilities affect an employee’s work attendance and specifically – an employee’s ability to report to work regularly at a scheduled time. Some of the more common such conditions are sleep apnea and extreme cases of depression where an employee is unable to even get out of bed in the Read More …
One common mistake that employees who deal with harassment and bullying in the workplace make is reacting with anger to the harasser/bully. They either lose temper, raise their voice and give the harasser a piece of their mind while yelling and screaming, or they threaten the bully openly or implicitly with violence, or they talk Read More …
One of the more important cases discussing retaliation protection for employees and specifically what it means to oppose harassment is the US Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford v. Metropolitan Gov’t of Nashville (2009). In that case, a 30-year employee was interviewed as part of the investigation into sexual harassment allegations against one of the directors Read More …
The recent court decision in Swenson v Morongo Unified School District has an important holding on disability laws for California employees. It re-affirms that an employee’s employment and disciplinary status are not grounds for denying reasonable accommodations under ADA and FEHA. In Swanson, the claimant – a teacher with nearly 30 years of work experience Read More …
In a recent wrongful termination case we handled, we made an argument that a bad performance review after complaining to management about discrimination is evidence of retaliation. We did not hope that this relatively insignificant action by the employer (as compared to demotion, suspension, termination, etc) would be found to be actual evidence of retaliation Read More …
The video below explains what “protected activity” means within the context for California anti-retaliation laws: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TorqIYSyHGw?rel=0]
Retaliation claims are some of the most frequently filed cases against companies by their employees. It seems that it’s almost a part of human nature for managers to retaliate against their subordinates for making complaints or for asking for something that makes managers’ life harder (such as requesting accommodations to a disability, or requesting medical Read More …