Aug 21 2024
Josh Goodbaum: Hi, Amanda.
Amanda DeMatteis: Hi, Josh. What are we gonna talk about today?
Goodbaum: I want to talk about bullying – a big topic for a lot of employees in Connecticut and around the country who are feeling uncomfortable at work. It might be because they’re being bullied by their boss. It might be by a coworker. It might be by a customer or a vendor of their employer. But regardless of who’s doing the bullying, in a lot of circumstances, the advice from an employment lawyer is the same.
What kind of protections does the law provide to employees facing bullying? That’s what they want to know.
DeMatteis: This is a tough one, Josh. There are no state or federal laws that protect employees from bullying in the workplace. But what we do have is, of course, our anti-discrimination laws at both the state and federal level, and that prohibits hostility or abuse on the basis of an employee’s protected characteristics or conduct.
Well, what does that mean? That means if your coworker or boss is creating this hostile work environment on the basis of your sex, your race, your national origin, a disability you might have, or any other of our protected classes, that may be actionable under state or federal law.
The question we get a lot though, Josh, is, “Well, they’re just bullying me and I don’t know why.” Right? It’s not one of those characteristics that is traditionally protected by either state or federal law. And that gets a little bit more complicated.
There are some laws that will protect Connecticut employees at work and I thought it would be useful to talk about those. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is one of them. Defamation is another one. Remember the protections that we have under OSHA – that there is a safe workplace that you are able to go to. Think of the NLRA. Maybe you’re bargaining for a safe workplace – the NLRA will protect that type of protected conduct. So, you can think about these options that you have to protect against bullying.
Also remember: If your work environment is causing or exacerbating a health condition that you have, you may have protection under our state and federal laws that protect disabled persons at work. Also, the Family and Medical Leave Act. If your work environment is causing you such distress that you want protected time off from work to address your own serious health condition, you may be able to do that under the FMLA.
So, there’s a couple of things to really consider: What is being said about you? Is what’s being said about you on the basis of one of these protected characteristics or conduct? Is what’s being said about you knowingly false, and is that being published to a third party? Is it causing you some level of harm, or is it making your work environment unsafe? These are the things you need to analyze – of course, with the help of an employment lawyer – to see if what’s going on at work is, in fact, actionable.
It’s a little bit tricky, and it’s of course all very fact-specific. But even though we don’t have state or federal laws specifically prohibiting bullying at work, there may be some workarounds that we can examine thoughtfully with you.
Goodbaum: Right, so some bullying might violate some of our employment laws and some of it might not. And that’s the kind of tricky subject that is the reason employment lawyers exist, I suppose.
Thanks for this information, Amanda. Thank you all for watching and we’ll see you next time.
Posted by Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald & Pirrotti, P.C. in Commentary
Tagged Amanda DeMatteis, Joshua Goodbaum
