Legal Question in Employment Law in California
I am a current associate of Wal-Mart at store #1693 in Redlands California. I work in the automotive bay of the store. We have a assistant manager tammy in charge of us that is very verbally abusive on a almost daily basis she goes into the bay and tells us something along the line of if you do not do this or are caught doing this you are fired or she walks up to someone and says you want to be fired? She also walks up to female associates and tells them sexual remarks like �you want to pet my hairy cat?� I along with several other associates have reported this to multiple management levels: assistant management, store manager, and our district management only to have nothing done about the problem, this manager also allows our service manager lamanda to be abusive to us verbally also on more then one occasion I have told by the service manager that I am a idiot or moron she has also told other co-workers of mine �not to lessen to that liar� I have multiple current and former associates willing to make a written statement or testify in person about the abuse from the two managers said above. Is there anything that I can do about this abuse? Now I am in the position of being fired by our assistant manager because I have a disability that slows down how fast I am able to work, I have also just recently been written up because the I have to remove the store issued safety glasses because they make my eyes feel like they burn after I am wearing constantly for more then a hour, I have spoken to another manager about this issue and tried to explain the problem to tammy but she told me she didn�t care what my problem is. She told me that if I can�t wear the glasses constantly I have to find a different position in the store that has reduced pay and I would loose my full time status and benefits which includes my medical which I need because of my disability. I need some advice to help handle this hostile work environment thank you for you time.
3 Answers from Attorneys
It appears from your explanation that there may be a number of legal violations, including disability discrimination, harassment, and/or retaliation. No employer, including a manager, is allowed to discriminate against an employee because of their disability. If your manager is treating you differently because of your disability, you may have a legal claim.
Also, if you complained to HR that the sexual comments your manager makes to the other women are offensive to you and others, and she has started treating you worse because of that complaint, you may have a retaliation claim.
However, it is difficult to fully evaluate any claims you may have based on just the information you provided. You need to speak with an employment lawyer immediately to fully evaluate your situation. My law firm would be happy to speak with you about this. You can call us at (213) 536-4236, email us at [email protected], or go to our website, www.sarnofflaw.com, for further information. There is also an online case evaluation questionnaire on our website you can complete that has specific questions to help us evaluate your case.
If your disabilities are related to your jobs you are protected under worker's compensation laws and your employer has to provide you with medical treatment and disability benefits if you can't perform your job. Feel free to call us at 213.388.7070 for a free consultation.
There are no laws against simple 'unfair treatment', poor management, verbal abuse, insults, job threats, etc. However, the disability and sexual harassment issues are legally actionable under the discrimination laws, and the abusive behavior can then be coupled with that as part of a lawsuit. If serious about pursuing that, feel free to contact me, I've been doing these cases for over 20 years.
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