Human Resource Blog

Retaliation in Georgia

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One employee of our Georgia factory has made several discrimination complaints with the EEOC and Human Resources. My boss says she is a troublemaker and I should fire her, even if I have to make up a reason. What do you think?

No, you must not fire this employee. Firing a worker under a trumped-up excuse for the purposes of retaliation, if that worker has made complaints to your Human Resources department or to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is clearly against the law.

It is illegal even if the original complaints were not legitimate. The protection stems from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII. It applies to discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, or country of origin. It also applies to retaliation against the workers who file good-faith discrimination complaints.

Employers who ignore Title VII do so at their financial peril. Even if there is no basis for an EEOC complaint, retaliation alone is a type of discrimination. A monumental decision against a company based in Fort Collins, Colorado, demonstrates this. As a result of a finding that it had discriminated on the basis of race and sex, the company had to pay out $5 million. Fortunately the company, Woodward Governor, had not retaliated against the workers who had complained. They were kept in their positions at the company’s factories in Rockford and Rockton, Illinois. If retaliation had occurred, the company’s costs could have been far greater.

Title VII is meant to protect workers against discrimination. If companies could legally retaliate against workers who made complaints about discrimination, then employees would be reluctant to file those complaints. Enforcement of the anti-discrimination laws would become far more difficult, and discrimination would continue.

Unfortunately, companies have developed many ways of retaliating against workers who file complaints. Fortunately, all may be deemed illegal.

Those methods of retaliation include not only firing but also demotion. They also include changing a complainant’s job conditions or duties. They may involve failing to give a pay hike or a promotion that is deserved. Some employers have been known to recruit other workers in a campaign of silence against the complaining employee, or to encourage fellow-workers to shun the complainant in other ways.