Washington Hostile Work Environment
Posted by Tamara
Employers need to understand that “hostile work environment” complaints need not be limited to discrimination based on gender.
They may also include cases in which employees have been harassed or subjected to ridicule because of ethnicity or because of a disability, among other things.
The focus here is on examples of hostile work environments caused when disabled workers faced mockery about their disability.
In one incident, a disabled employee is complaining that recurrent jokes about his hearing problem and his speech impediment created a hostile work environment. In this case, the employer must move quickly and put an immediate stop to any jokes and teasing about the worker.
A recent case of the same nature led to a $166,500 award to the employee subjected to the ridicule. In this incident, the hearing-impaired regional manager of a fast-food franchise in Dallas faced derision that included remarks like “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?” and “You got your ears on?” One aspect of this case that many considered shocking was the fact that it was the Human Resources professional and the franchise owner who were making the remarks. The regional manager filed a “hostile work environment” complaint with the EEOC. When it went to court, the case was found in the regional manager’s favor, resulting in the $166,000-plus award.
Both cases demonstrate that creation of a “hostile work environment” is more than sexual harassment. While it may involve a certain kind of sexual harassment where someone faces offensive or abusive conduct because of gender, this sort of harassment constitutes only one form of “hostile work environment.”
The bottom line is this: if a reasonable person (of the group facing the ridicule or harassment) would believe an action to be hostile, it is likely to meet the legal test.
This same criterion has been used for cases involving creed, nationality, race, ethnicity, and any other feature covered under federal discrimination laws. Jokes about dress, culture, and accent, as well as racial slurs, all fall into this category.
More broadly, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) makes it illegal to discriminate in the workplace based on disability.
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