You already know you were harassed because you felt harassed by what happened. But there’s more to a harassment claim than the event where you felt harassed. To have a harassment claim, you have to be part of a protected class and the harassment has to be because of your status in that protected class.
But knowing what the protected classes are and who fits into them can be difficult. Especially when you’re still processing what happened and you’re trying to figure out what to do next.
In a big settlement for the gender-pay gap, the University of Denver will pay $2.7 million after an unequal-pay lawsuit was brought by female professors. This is a huge victory for those fighting for equal pay and shows that change for women is coming. The employment law case was originally brought by one female professor in 2013. However, the case built momentum when she joined forces with other female professors who believed they were also underpaid.
At the time, the female professor was paid $40,000 less than the university average for the same position. She had been teaching for several decades and had never asked for a raise, making $109,000 per year. Meanwhile, the median salary for professors was $149,000. In 2012, DU announced it would use earmarked money for faculty raises, and the female professor raised concerns about gender parity and asked that the additional money be used to remedy inequities. Raises were given, but they widened the pay gap, leaving female full-time professors earning a mean salary $15,859 less than male professors.
Thinking back to how far equality has come for all types of different people, it's almost hard to imagine that discrimination still happens in the workplace. However, with so many different people working in a work environment, some people can't handle it. Discrimination in the workplace is not a legitimate or allowable behavior. If you feel you have experienced discrimination, here's what to look out for.
There could be several ways that a person's race could be held against them. Beyond outright admission by an employer, discrimination could be detected based on an employer's previous hiring or firing decisions. If minorities are continually interviewed and not selected, or if minorities are always passed over for a job promotion, these patterns could indicate discrimination. Also, it's possible that discrimination could be happening with the employer being unawares.
You’ve been working for your company for years. You’ve managed projects, you’ve been promoted and have always put your best work forward for them. Now, they are closing their doors to you. It can come out of nowhere, but it happens: suddenly you're faced with losing your job.
Among the confusion, anger, frustration, stress and loss of benefits comes another key concern: your severance agreement. Odds are you will be offered a severance package should you suddenly lose your job; before you sign anything, though, make sure to contact an attorney who specializes in employment law to make sure you’re getting a fair deal.
For every hour a person is working, it is another hour not spent with family, friends or leisure. As such, every worker is entitled to the pay they have earned. For some, pay can get complicated when figuring in overtime or other unusual hours.
For some workers, they do not initially receive the correct hourly wage for overtime or even for regular hourly wages. Whether the correct wage was not calculated correctly, it was not paid per employer decision or for some other reason, all employees are to be paid the correct wage. Some wage issues are due to a misclassification of salary wages when a person should, in fact, be paid hourly and thus, qualify for overtime, if such overtime is worked by the employee.
If you’re someone who has worked in their field for a few decades, chances are you’ve felt at least a twinge of mistreatment because of your advancing age. Age discrimination is a problem nationwide, and it hurts some of the best trained and most experienced people in the job market.
Colorado Public Radio reported that people as young as their 40s are being turned away from jobs with frightening frequency. Scott Croushore, a Denver based technology consultant, has found he needs to send over four times the number of resumes he used to. It wasn’t until he removed 13 of his 23 years of experience from his resume that he began to get responses.
Sometimes, it might feel like everyone at one's workplace is against them. Whether that is just the result of a bad day or something more serious is worth considering. There is such thing as workplace retaliation, and it can happen as a result of reporting inappropriate workplace behavior, among other things.
Retaliation in the workplace is defined as any adverse action that a company takes against an employee because he or she filed a complaint about harassment or discrimination. So, for example, an employee may bring to management attention that they have experienced harassment at work. If an employer is made aware of the alleged incident and yet does nothing to investigate, they can become responsible for retaliation or retaliatory behavior. There are other ways that an employer can retaliate against an employee.
In 2017, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 6,696 sexual harassment charges and obtained $46.3 million in settlements for victims of sexual harassment. In Colorado, sexual harassment claims made up 36 percent of the total number of EEOC claims.
In a shift that undermines the progress of labor rights, more employers are choosing to utilize mandatory arbitration clauses to handle harassment disputes. While initially the clauses seem innocuous, they strip away an employee’s legal power.
Social media giant, Facebook, has come under heat recently. There have been allegations related to privacy issues and information sharing, among others. The most recent kerfuffle relates to discrimination and how Facebook allows its advertisers to target ads. Colorado fair housing advocates are now suing, alleging that their marketplace allows discrimination.
The Federal court lawsuit brought seeks to prove that Facebook has been continuing to allow advertisers to discriminate, even though civil rights and housing groups have notified the company as far back as 2016 of its discriminatory status. It also notified them that Facebook is in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act. It seeks unspecified damages and a court order to end discrimination. The lawsuit stems from the advertising platform in which it allegedly allows landlords and real estate brokers to target advertising to discriminate against families with children, women and those with disabilities.
Some have been calling 2018 the year of the woman. The truth is that more often than not, women are the group suffering the effects of workplace sexual harassment. Anyone can be affected, but predominantly, women are the victims of the unwanted sexual advances. Sexual harassment can manifest in many ways, so it is good to understand if one is the target of sexually harassment.
Understanding one's circumstances and what is and is not okay is the key to discovering if one is suffering sexual harassment at work. Sexual harassment is never okay, but in the workplace, it can be especially damaging as it can prevent the advancement of a person's career and can have lasting emotional effects. Quid pro quo occurs in instances when something is offered in exchange for something else, like sexual advances in exchange for a promotion.
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