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Hostile Work Evironment

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i work for a costruction company in arcadia, fl and my direct supervisor continually treats me degradingly by talking down to me and treating me as if i am a child and no matter what you do its not good enough for him. i have complained to his boss twice now and still it continues. he continually says only a dummy would do that and even at one point called me a dumbf**k for a task that i was assigned and didn’t turn out well and it ended up being the equipment was faulty not my process. is there anything i can do i feel as if he is trying to make me quit because he doesn’t like me and i like my job but i stay up at nights worrying and always have headaches that i believe are from the stress he causes me.

This situation certainly sounds unpleasant, but it may not meet the legal definition of a hostile work environment. Unfortunately, there is no law that supervisors have to treat employees with courtesy and respect.

The true definition of a hostile work environment would be one where an employee experiences this type of treatment because he or she belongs to a protected group. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers are prohibited from discriminating against workers based on sex, religion, race, color, or national ancestry. Other laws make it illegal to discriminate against workers based on pregnancy, disability or age if they are over 40.

By far the two most common types of hostile work environment are due to sex and race. In some cases, African Americans have reported nooses hanging from their lockers or racial epithets scrawled on the walls in work areas. In others, there have been Ku Klux Klan brochures in the employee break rooms. Some female employees have been the target of insults and threats. Those are textbook cases of a hostile work environment.

Of course, those are not the only types of hostile work environment. It is certainly possible for a female supervisor to create a hostile work environment for a male employee, or for a female employee. As long as she is doing it because of the employee’s sex, that is a hostile work environment. If she is doing it for a reason unrelated to the employee’s protected status, it’s not a hostile work environment.

It is possible for an African American supervisor to discriminate against a Caucasian employee, or against an African American employee. If this is racially motivated, that would be a hostile work environment. However, if the supervisor is discriminating against the employee because he was born in Arizona, that’s unpleasant, it’s not fair…but it’s not a hostile work environment.

For another example, if the supervisor’s comments are for a refusal to use capital letters while typing , then that does not constitute a hostile work environment under the law.

An employee who feels that they are being discriminated against, illegally, should contact the HR department. If there is no HR department, they should contact the supervisor’s boss or company owner. If that is not successful, the next step would be to contact the EEOC, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the federal laws on discrimination.

Florida also has its own anti-discrimination law at the state level, with a similar test for a hostile work environment.