The banking industry is known for some of the highest pressure to perform and sell products and services. This pressure is also a common reason that mid level managers or even top level managers retaliate against employees who take time off for medical leave or disability leave. 

Consider a loan officer, who must close a certain amount of loans every quarter. When he is going on FMLA or some other type of protected medical leave or disability leave after being diagnosed with some type of chronic condition, his absence will obviously affect his sales and the overall sales of his department. His manager will be worried about his own numbers and how his department will look to his superiors. This type of situation is fertile grounds for retaliation. Moreover, if the employer suspects, based on the diagnosis, that the employee will need leave again in the future or that his health issues will be ongoing and will require some type of disability accommodation, the incentive to get rid of that employee will be even greater.   

In this type of situation, the employer-bank will try to come up with all kinds of bogus reasons for terminating an employee -from making it look like a lay-off / restructuring to issues a PIP to that employee that will eventually culminate and firing for questionable performance issues.  


In this type of cases, one e-mail showing some type of animosity toward an employee's medical leave or his absence or one witness who overheard this type of conversation can make a difference between having a strong case or a weak case/ no case. Your attorney should talk to as many witnesses possible, and supboena e-mails from every decision maker during the relevant period of time that might shed light on whether your medical leave played part in being fired. 

One of the common mistakes that aggrieved employees make prior to being terminated when they feel that they are being retaliated against, is that they lose their temper when they feel that their rights are being violated. This often hurts them makes their potential legal claims for retaliation and wrongful termination much weaker. 


Imagine you request a medical time off under FMLA, your manager mistakenly believes that you are not entitled to it because somehow he/she determined that your medical condition is not serious enough to qualify or even worse - the employer thinks you are faking it. You then give your that manager a peace of your mind, telling them that they are not good and they are incompetent. Perhaps you raise your voice and you also use some inappropriate language. At the same time, you go to his/her superior and complain about denial of your rights. You might even send a nasty e-mail or two on top, to other managers to tell them how unhappy you are about your bosses ignorance. These actions give your employer an independent, and perfectly legal reason to terminate you - being rude, verbally violent and insubordination.  

Instead, you should always act like a "politician" , so to speak. You should never lose your cool or be rude or inappropriate with your boss. Most of the times, employee's right are violated not on person but because the employer simply doesn't know better or because the company has to deal with certain financial or productivity pressures that push them in the wrong directly legally. This is not to justify their actions but to make you realize that there is absolutely no point and no benefit in raising your voice or becoming aggressive toward your employer.  

Further, when you remain civil at all times, and the employer does violate the law by discriminating or retaliating against you, your potential legal case will be much stronger, as the employer will not have the "insubordination" excuse for retaliating or firing you. The more calmly you act in any legal proceeding, including your deposition or your testimony in court, the more likely you are to do better, and in large part because people who are calm are also more believable. 

California law includes a number of provisions that protect employees of hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities from retaliation and discrimination against them for complaining about patient care and patient safety at their workplace:  

California Health and Safety Code section 1278.5 prohibits any healthcare facility from discriminating or retaliating against any employee for complianing about or initiating an investigation relating to the care, services or conditions of that facility.  

California Business and Professions Code section 510 prohibits any organization from terminating or otherwise penalizing a healthcare practitioner for protesting  a decision, policy or practice that impairs the practitioner's ability to provide appropriate healthcare to his or her patients. 

California Labor Code section 232.5 prohibits employers from retaliating or otherwise disciplining or terminating an employee for disclosing information about an employee's working conditions.  

California Labor Code section 6310 prohibits employers from discriminating against or terminating an employee 
for complaining to his employer, representative of government agency about health and safety violations.   

The above laws are particularly applicable to those employees who are retaliated for witnessing and reporting safety and health violations as well as patient abuse by doctors or nurses.    

For more information about retaliation, please visit our California Retaliation Law Blog.

One of the common issues that hospital employees face at Kaiser and other major healthcare networks, is retaliation by their managers for reporting patient safety issues to upper management or outside agencies. 
Although completely illegal, it is almost natural for managers to feel both threatened and angry when an employee brings a complaint about the safety issues in their department. The unlawful workplace retaliation can take many forms - from false accusations of misconduct and violation of policies to administrative leave, suspensions, demotions and even termination.

If you suspect that your employer has engaged in retaliation campaign against you and is trying to build a paperwork to drive you out, it's important that you contact an employment attorney to discuss what legal and practical steps you can take to possible prevent your termination or make sure that you have a stronger retaliation claim later, if and when you decide to bring a claim against the employer.

One of the unfortunate work related violations in California hospital, clinics and other healthcare facilities is the retaliation against nurses for complaining about patient safety or violations by doctors or other staff. Imagine a nurse files a complaint or contacts a state agency with concerns about how her facility treats patients or how certain doctors perform their duties. An internal or an outside investigator is brought to look into the issue, interviewing the complaining nurse and the doctors mentioned in the complaint.

Although it would be completely illegal, it is almost natural for a doctor to feel like the lower-ranked nurse is trying to jeopardize the doctor's status and even employment at that healthcare facility. The doctor then might try to retaliated against the nurse by trying to get her in trouble. This can be done by reporting the most minor violations of that nurse or looking for charting errors in that nurses charts or making a complaint against that nurses with abstract and highly subjective issues, such as insubordination, etc... 

If you are about to complain about a certain health and safety violation or patient care violation at your healthcare facility, it is important that you are aware of a number of other retaliation issues before you move forward to make sure that you know how to prevent or how to deal best with retaliation and/or how to preserve the option of being able to file a retaliation lawsuit later if and when you need to do so.

Recently, one employee of Caltrans contacted me in what seemed to be an urgent need for help and legal representation, as she was subjected to egregious harassment by her supervisor, and could not get any help from the higher management or human resources department. Her supervisor openly and repeatedly disregarded her disability limitations in t he most humiliating manner.    

The same Caltrans employee kindly shared with me a rather disturbing article about the discrimination and harassment that's taking place in the Caltrans Oakland office. Unfortunately, this kind of treatment of employees in large public offices is not as uncommon as one might think. One reasons for this seems to be the impunity which some of the managers enjoy for such violations. The perpetrators of discrimination and their superiors are rarely terminated and usually get a slap on the wrist in the form of a confident reprimand letter or a warning, while costing the city, county or state department many thousands of dollars in legal fees and in settlement. 

On Friday, June 11, 2010, the Eastern District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss my client's case. I had a feeling that it was going to happen but was willing to give it a shot, hoping that perhaps the judge will have a more liberal view of the claims asserted than he actually did. 

My client was a loss prevention agent, working for one of the large security companies at a department store in Sacramento. He was terminated shortly after complaining to the corporate management about his co-workers and his immediate supervisor's time clock fraud and reporting false apprehensions of shoplifters that didn't actually happen. The formal reason for terminating my client was his "failure to meet apprehension goals" which is inherently nonsensical, as a loss prevention agent has no control over how many people actually try to steal merchandise from the store. The court found that preventing internal fraud that only affects the private employer and not public interest at large is not sufficient to give rise to a public policy retaliation and wrongful termination claim. 

I was disappointed at the impunity that the employer will enjoy in this case, even though a number of witnesses informed me that my client's termination was orchestrated and there was a significant concern about him knowing about the misrepresentation.

Below is the court's order which includes the brief factual background of the case and the court's decision and analysis.

 

You have a job that you value and enjoy, and it seems that you get along with everyone at the company except those few "bad apples" - your manager who harasses or retaliates against you and his superiors who are either reluctant to take action because they are biased and side with your manager no matter what, or because they want to "play it safe" by sweeping your reported problems under the rug.   

If you are not ready to quit and you believe that the situation can be remedied, it is very important that you don't become a victim of your anger. You should not allow yourself to lose your cool, to act or talk in a rude or offensive manner to your superiors, whether they are guilty of unlawful misconduct or not and not give them legitimate, legal reason to suspend or terminate you. This is the time to act like a true diplomat  - to voice your concerns in a compelling but courteous manner to all those who have the authority to address your issues without yelling at anyone or threatening your employer with a lawsuit.

As tempted as you might be to give your boss a piece of your mind - anger never serves any employee's best interests before litigation or after the lawsuit is filed, when treating the situation like business rather than personal battle is even more important for successful prosecution of a case in court.

Workplace Retaliation is one of the most common claims in the employment lawsuit filings in California. The other day I had a conversation with a friend who is in charge of the human resources department at one of the government offices in Sacramento. As an employment lawyer, I was really curious to learn about her perspective on the employer-employee relationships, disputes, as well as the wrongful termination claims.  

My friend openly told me that many of the employee are overly "dramatic" believing that their co-workers treat then unfairly or harass them, and that their management has conspired to get rid of them. 

The managers, in his opinion, cause many issues at workplace, including the ones that lead to lawsuits for harassment, retaliation and wrongful termination, because of their sense of entitlement. My friend told me that managers regularly respond to employee's complaint by saying that the manager is above the employee, that the manager can do whatever he or she wants, and that it's an employee's job to comply. It is only natural then for the managers to retaliate against their employees, when the same employee complain about them due to the mixed feelings of superiority and fear of losing their management position.