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News Articles >> California Labor Law: "I'm a victim of H..
California Labor Law: "I'm a victim of Harassment"
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| August 15, 2007. By Gordon Gibb |  RSS  Del.icio.us  Seed Newsvine  Facebook |
Benicia, CA: Elisabeth Ingram was fired from her job as a server with the Black Angus restaurant in Pleasant Hill, California. The reason? The restaurant claims she violated their policy with regard to explicit language in the workplace. What she can't figure out is why all the other employees were not fired too. California labor laws also have policies...
In Elisabeth's mind it's a case of double standard.
"About two months ago, myself and about four other servers were engaged in a sexually-suggestive conversation (away from the customers.) A manager walked by and gave everyone involved in the conversation a written warning."
"After that incident, Elisabeth says, the servers toned down their private chatter. However, what confused Elisabeth was the fact that while the servers were warned against behaviour that management apparently did not condone, there were others in the restaurant's employ - including a manager Elisabeth reported to - who habitually used explicit language and were verbally abusive. "There was this one gentleman who would constantly call me names," Elisabeth says.
She goes on to point out that in a regular meeting she had with this gentleman, with a manager present, mention was made of Elisabeth's hairdo that was reminiscent of a Barbie doll. "I'm blonde with blue eyes," Elisabeth says. "And this gentleman says 'yeah, a fat Barbie Doll.'" Elisabeth says that in the meeting she articulated her displeasure with that comment in no uncertain terms. The manager, who was sitting there, said nothing.
Later that week, Elisabeth says she was having a private conversation with a former server who had been promoted to a trainer. The conversation eventually evolved to the management person who had been calling Elisabeth names. The just-promoted trainer recalled a particularly unkind name that the manager had called her. Elisabeth replied to the trainer that she had responded to him, at the time, in kind.
A manager overheard the conversation between Elisabeth and the trainer.
Later that day Elisabeth noticed that her hours at the restaurant were being cut back. She asked one of the managers about it, but the manager didn't know why, and went to speak with one of the other managers. "That's when they came back and said, 'Beth we need to talk to you.' I go into the office, where they tell me that they're letting me go because of that conversation." Elisabeth rebutted that the unkind remarks traded with the verbally abusive manager happened long before the written warning to employees. "And what about him?" Elisabeth retorted, in reference to the verbal abuse. "He calls me all these names. And they say, 'well, we haven't heard that.' And I say, 'you mean you haven't heard it TODAY?' And they said nothing."
Elisabeth goes on to say that this particular manager, who had been with the restaurant for about three years (vs.: her own four months) had a reputation amongst the staff for abusive language, sexually explicit statements and various boasts of his sexual prowess, which he openly shared, with staff. "And they say in the meeting where I was fired, 'Yeah, we've heard that.'
"But they let me go anyway. They offered me cash, but I wouldn't take it."
What bothers Elisabeth is the double standard that existed amongst the more senior staff at the restaurant. She tells of an incident that happened the night before she was fired, when a bartender was razzing her about her hair and her make-up, "and saying things like 'are you trying to make it onto the runway, have you run your hair across the rug today, and what's up with your make-up?' - and the manager who fired me was sitting there, listening, and laughing his head off."
All employees of the restaurant wear a standardized uniform, so it wasn't like she was in a position to dress provocatively, Elisabeth says.
She doesn't understand why the abusive manager is allowed to keep his job, while she was given the boot. Elisabeth felt she was continually harassed and verbally abused - and while she stood up for herself in the face of the most serious verbal abuse, she silently absorbed a lot of it as well.
In the end she lost her job, and in her view she lost it unfairly.
California labor law carries strict guidelines on what is and isn't harassment in the workplace. Harassment is defined as any form of unsolicited, deliberately offensive behaviour and can be instigated by a manager, co-worker, a vendor or a client or customer. Harassment can include gender or sexual orientation harassment, sexual harassment, or bullying.
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