One of the things we do in our office is to make sure employees who are employed in White Plains, NY and want to continue to be employed in dealing with issues in the work place. Also, we have had employees who have reported to us that their bosses are making derogatory comments about other employees to the employee talking to us and these comments are making them feel very uncomfortable and the question arises as to what the employee can do about that. We work with the employee to take a look at the environment and to take a look at what the employer policies and procedures are and to encourage that employee to follow those policies and procedures as it relates to discomfort at the work place and to attempt to resolve those issues internally because in order to have a lawsuit you have to pursue those issues internally if there is a process for it and you have to establish that these comments are severe and pervasive enough for a reason to be uncomfortable in that situation. So what we do is try to look at every part of the situation, look at the whole horizon and try to work with the employee to pursue an internal resolution with the employer. Sometimes, that doesn’t work and then we have to look at whether in our judgment we think a court will agree that the discomfort, the comments are so severe and pervasive that they create a hostile work environment and if so we discuss with the client what the options are including filing a complaint in an administrative agency such as the New York State Division of Human Rights or the EEOC, the United states Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or pursuing a claim in court.
This informational blog post was provided by Jane Gould, an experienced White Plains, New York Employee Lawyer.