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Was My Firing Illegal?

Even though California is an at-will state and gives your employer the ability to fire you with or without reason, it does not mean that they can fire you for any reason. The employer cannot breach any contract (written or oral); they cannot violate public policy (federal, state, nor local); and the employer cannot retaliate against any employee who brought unsafe or illegal work practices to light.

Can I Sue My Former Employer for Wrongful Termination?

Before you file a lawsuit your employer for wrongful termination, you must first file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH). Depending on the circumstances that surround your particular wrongful termination, it is necessary that you file your lawsuit within a certain time limit, known as the statute of limitations. If the statute of limitations expires before you can file your suit, you will be barred from pursuing the lawsuit. If you would like to speak more about this with a wrongful termination lawyer at our firm, please contact us.

How Do I Make a Claim for Wrongful Termination?

To file a wrongful termination claim, you must first file a charge with your local U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) office. This charge must be filed within 180 days from the day of your termination. The charge should include your personal contact information and your employer's contact information. In addition, you must describe the reason for your termination and state your union membership, if applicable.

The EEOC will then begin investigating the employer. If the EEOC doesn't pursue legal action within 60 days, you are free to pursue your own legal action against your employer. In each phase of this process, it is important that you retain the services of an experienced Birmingham wrongful termination attorney to help ensure you are taking the proper steps and presenting the strongest case you can.

Workplace Discrimination

Employers need to focus on only two qualities when it comes to employee-related decisions: their qualifications for the job and their ability to perform the essential job functions (with or without reasonable accommodation). All else is arbitrary and should not influence the employer in any way. If an employer uses other characteristics of an employee's or applicant's status, it may be against the law. While many employers do not discriminate, there are still some employers who have specific biases to which they are blind, and it influences their business-related decisions. This is unlawful. An employer cannot single out and focus on things like race, color, sex, religion, country of origin, genetic information, disability (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, and gender identity/expression. If a worker who is protected under the federal and state laws believes they have been subjected to unfair treatment because of their protected characteristic, they have the right to file a lawsuit against their employer.

Age Discrimination Claim Cases

Age Discrimination Claim Cases Every day, our employment lawyers hear about age discrimination issues at the workplace. It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against someone based on age. Qualifications and the ability perform the essential job functions should serve as the only facts that an employer uses to decide whether or not to employ or keep that employee on staff. The reality is, however, many employers use other antiquated markers based on prejudices that they may hold. These can be things like race, ethnicity, sex, country of origin, religion, mental illness, and age. When employees use these markers to make employment-based decisions, it is considered discrimination, and discrimination is unlawful in the eyes of both federal and state laws. (Now, what the discrimination is based on may fluctuate from federal to state, and from state to state.) Fortunately, there are federal and state laws that have been put in place to protect employees from such discrimination. If you have any questions after reading this article, please contact our Los Angeles law firm for a free consultation. Our Los Angeles attorneys are able to help you anywhere in the State of California.

What Is Age Discrimination?

It is unlawful for your employer to treat you differently simply because of your age. Even in the early and mid 20th century, it was lawful for employers to make a decision based on their employee's age. That means that if you were old back in the day in America, an employer could fire you or force you to retire and it would not have been against the law. In 1967, Congress passed a law which prohibited employers from doing such an arbitrary act. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids employers from discriminating against employees who are 40 years of age or older.

How to Prove a Sex Discrimination Case

If you believe that you are a victim of sex discrimination, you may have the grounds to file a lawsuit against your employer. But in order to prove that you experienced sex discrimination at work, there are a few things that you need to collect known as evidence. The evidence you provide must sway the courts and show that it was more likely than not that your employer subjected you to discrimination. The California Labor Law Employment Attorneys Group are your lawyers in Los Angeles that can help you gather the necessary evidence to prove your case.

What Counts as Racial Discrimination?

Even in 2017, some employees still suffer from employer- or employee-based race discrimination. Your employer might be discriminating against you if they are segregating employees of a certain race in particular jobs, making employment decisions based on nothing but the color of someone's skin and the stereotypes that go along with that race, treating an employee differently for mingling with people of another race, or making distinctions based on skin color. Racial discrimination is against the law and gives employees who have suffered from discrimination the right to file a case against their employer.

Meal Breaks and State Law

State Laws: Less than half of U.S. states require companies to provide a meal or rest break. In many of these states, workers who work over 6 hours at once must be allowed 30 minutes to eat or rest. To avoid fraud, many states also enforce that this time is taken in the middle of the shift and not at the beginning or end, to protect employees from losing their break.

Rest breaks under California labor law are required for non-exempt employees who work three and a half (3 1/2) or more hours in a day. Employees are entitled to ten (10) minutes of rest period for each four (4) hours, or a substantial fraction thereof, that they work in a day.

Sexual harassment in the workplace

Sexual harassment is against the law under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010.

Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual behaviour, which could be expected to make a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. It can be physical, verbal or written.

Sexual harassment is not consensual interaction, flirtation or friendship. Sexual harassment is not behaviour that is mutually agreed upon.

Sexual harassment is covered in the workplace when it happens:

- at work
- at work-related events or where people are carrying out work-related functions
- between people sharing the same workplace

A single incident is enough to constitute sexual harassment - it doesn't have to be repeated.

Workplace Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment constitutes illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is enforced by the EEOC; anyone who wants to bring a legal claim of sexual harassment under Title VII has to bring a charge to the EEOC or a cooperating state agency first.[1] In 2017 the EEOC received 26,978 claims of workplace harassment, of which a little more than half (12,428) were about sex-based harassment[2] and a quarter (6,696) specifically about sexual harassment (U.S. EEOC 2018). Between 2005 and 2015, women made eight in ten sexual harassment charges to the EEOC; 20 percent were made by men (Frye 2017). Among women, Black women were the most likely of all racial and ethnic groups to have filed a sexual harassment charge (15.3 charges per 100,000 workers), and 1 in 17 sexual harassment charges filed with the EEOC also alleged racial discrimination (Rossie, Tucker, and Patrick 2018). Research suggests that only a small number of those who experience harassment (one in ten) ever formally report incidents of harassment - let alone make a charge to the EEOC - because of lack of accessible complaints processes, simple embarrassment, or fear of retaliation (Cortina and Berdahl 2008). This fear is justified: according to an analysis of EEOC data, 71 percent of charges in FY 2017 included a charge of retaliation (Frye 2017).

The most effective weapon against sexual harassment is prevention. Harassment does not disappear on its own. In fact, it is more likely that when the problem is not addressed, the harassment will worsen and become more difficult to remedy as time goes on.

What Exactly is a Work Accident?

According to the International Labour Organization, a work injury is a "discrete occurrence in the course of work" leading to physical or mental occupational injury. This includes an infinity of possible scenarios that you could suffer and that qualifies as a work injury. It could also include what is known as a fatal work accident, which is defined as an accident that leads to the death of a victim. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 337 million accidents happen on the job each year, resulting in more than 2.3 million deaths annually. These accidents include, but are not limited to, the following examples:

• Slip and Falls
• Contact with equipment or substances
• Exposure to toxins or toxic substances
• Contact with biohazard objects or substances
• Falls from great heights
• Machinery handling accidents
• Machinery failures
• Uncontrolled violent animals
• Electrocution

These are just a few examples of what can happen in the workplace. There are many more, of different levels of severity; from simple ankle sprains to irreparable damage, even death. That is why you should not remain silent. Contact us now.

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