Human Resource Blog

Unfair Disipline

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Almost the entire warehouse  filed a complaint against a supervisior.  In turn some of the concerns were vaild. But HR gave my co-worker (the person who sent in the complaint) a verbal warning, saying that she intimidated people into signing the complaint, which is not true. My co-worker was never present when signatures were signed. This to me seems like retailation. Could it be? HR did not even let her defend herself. She has witnesses to prove that HR isn’t being honest. Please help my co-worker. What should she do?

This may be retaliation, but it is probably not illegal retaliation. It depends upon what the original complaint was about.

 

Federal laws against retaliation protect employees only in specific situations. They protect workers from retaliation when the employee has complained about illegal discrimination based on race, color, age (over 40), sex, religion, national origin, pregnancy or disability.

They also protect the employee from retaliation when the employee lodges a complaint regarding:

– A violation of the wage and hour laws, such as minimum wage or overtime

– Unsafe working conditions

– A violation of the law by the employer, supervisor or another employee

If the original petition concerned one of these complaints, then the worker probably is subject to illegal retaliation and should contact the EEOC. This is true, even if the HR department eventually decided that the complaint was not founded (as long as the employee did not intend to commit fraud.)

However, the law doesn’t protect employees who lodge complaints of other types. Nor does it protect employees from punishment for other types of wrongdoing, such as intimidation of coworkers.

To be fair to the HR department, there are many ways to intimidate workers into signing a complaint, and some of them do not require the presence of the “bully.”  Presumably, if this employee has enough power to intimidate other workers into signing a complaint, she also has enough power to intimidate witnesses. So allowing her to “defend herself” won’t prove anything.

It’s likely that the HR department does have some evidence to support their action, and the HR department is simply trying to protect them from further intimidation.