Here are three things to know about employee legal rights in honor of Legal Awareness Day:
- Public Policy Violations:
If you suffer an adverse work consequence (demotion, firing, etc.) after complaining about something you reasonably believe to be against the law, the adverse action is against policy and is legally actionable.
Your belief about the illegality does not need to be correct, only reasonable. - Sexual Harassment:
Sexual harassment is often looked at in context of the surrounding facts, as the same comments or conduct in two different situations can be viewed differently.
If someone is perceived to have welcomed certain conduct, including comments, sexual harassment becomes less clear and harder to prove. With this in mind, it is imperative that the conduct in question is reported/expressed to be unwelcome to the harasser, if at all possible. - Employee Accommodations:
You may seek an accommodation related to a disability by engaging in a good faith interactive process with your employer.
However, even if the accommodation is reasonable, the employer does not have to provide the accommodation if it would undergo undue hardship in doing so.
What constitutes undue hardship will vary from employer to employer, with things including nature of the work, and employer resources being among the relevant considerations.
Related point:
Historically, working from home has been a disfavored accommodation from a legal standpoint.
Joseph Richardson is an employment attorney with McCune Wright Arevalo, LLP. Reach him at jlr@mccunewright.com or 602-926-7797.
