Posts tagged hostile work environment
Commentary Is Big Labor Reducing Worker Wages, Opportunities for Growth?
September 3, 2024 // But the Biden-Harris administration’s embrace of Big Labor—as in big national labor organizations, as opposed to small, local unions—actually hasn’t helped workers as unionized workers’ wages have fallen behind the wages of nonunion workers over the past four years. Unlike small local unions that are in better positions to represent the unique needs of their members and that may even have productive relationships with management, the Big Labor movement is increasingly putting politics, power, and one-size-fits-all policies above the personal well-being of many workers.
Op-ed: Diversity, equity, and exclusion: How the NLRB’s double standard on job-related speech hurts workers
March 22, 2024 // The NLRB in 2020 required Amazon to reinstate a male worker who had used a bullhorn to call a female colleague a “gutter bitch” and “crack ho,” among other misogynistic insults. The bullhorn-wielding worker had been engaged in a one-man union protest when the female co-worker told him to quiet down. The union activist replied with a string of insults that would be clear proof of a hostile workplace under any other circumstances. The NLRB nevertheless sided with the union activist, as it usually has in such situations. The board has long believed that allowances must be made for heated rhetoric when workers are engaged union-related activities. So, you cannot question a workplace diversity policy publicly at work and you cannot criticize the policy outside of work in the private-yet-public world of social media. Either one can get you fired for creating a hostile work environment. But a male worker can be openly hostile and insulting to female co-workers if the man is affiliated with a union.
‘Employees come second’: Why California’s legislative staffers hope to unionize
July 21, 2023 // Unlike other state workers, legislative staff are banned from unionizing to advocate for better working conditions. That could soon change under a bill making its way through the State Capitol. Assembly Bill 1, authored by Assembly member Tina McKinnor (D—Inglewood), would provide a framework for legislative staff to form a union. California’s over 200,000 other public employees are able to unionize. But legislative staff are notably excluded from the law, the Dills Act, that established those rights in the 1970s. AB 1 is the fifth attempt in recent years to change that.
Union turns blind eye to “pervasive” sexual harassment
October 14, 2022 // Teamsters Local 455 in Colorado was accused of fostering a hostile work environment for allowing ‘pervasive’ sexual harassment. The union is charged with violating federal law for failing to take action against its business agent, despite being notified that he had sexually harassed and verbally assaulted female staff. Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act protects the union’s employees from harassment at work. It also requires Local 455 to respond to sexual harassment complaints by supervisors, between coworkers, or involving customers or clients. A union representative, however, has no legal duty to review or respond to sexual harassment claims by union members. Though, they can take on that duty in their own Codes of Conduct or collective bargaining agreements. Eisenberg & Baum, LLP, a New York-based law firm whose gender discrimination and sexual harassment attorneys work with employees in unions across the country, explains, however, that may not always lead to the best outcome