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We hope that there are several instructive takeaways concerning employment law on our website at the Southern California business law firm of Larson & Gaston.
We suspect that one thing central to the realm that likely jumps out from our narrative is employment law’s sheer complexity. The on-the-job interaction between employers and workers encompasses wide-ranging matters. Moreover, the labor sphere is overseen by multiple municipal, state and federal actors. Further still, scores of laws complement, overlap and sometimes even contradict each other.
And then there is the constant current of volatility that marks the workplace. That is perhaps nowhere better evidenced than through statistics relevant to employees’ claims of discrimination and harassment sometimes brought against company owners, managers and co-workers.
A recent Insurance Journal article references that, citing a rather startling statistic supplied by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
And that is this: Reportedly, workers across the country lodged 84,254 work-related discrimination claims with the agency during the last fiscal year.
Charges run a wide gamut of alleged misconduct, with the EEOC breaking claims down into major categories compiled in a top-10 list.
Leading the pack during the fiscal year was employer retaliation against employees allegedly engaging in lawful work behavior (e.g., discussing salary matters and overtime policies, raising union-linked issues and acting as a whistleblower). Approximately one-third of all filings related to discrimination based on race. Disability-linked discrimination additionally accounted for many thousands of charges. So too did claims connected with gender, religion, age, national origin and other so-called “protected” categories.
In addition to processing the scores of thousands of discrimination filings, the EEOC also took about 540,000 phone calls during the year from workers across the United States.