Sexual harassment letter - Again

standem

The employee was often described as uncooperative, but I am not sure at this point if this an outgrowth of communication issues, hers and/or those within the company. She was not an extremely popular employee but she did have quite a few people who did like her a lot and her work was known to be top quality. At this point I am not sure what she thinks that her new manager did not want female executives but personnel records show that 2 other female managers were terminated while working under this partcular senior manager, which makes me worry. The harassing incidents she mentioned to me involved the manager in question specifically and solely as the harasser.She is asking for a fairly large amount, I think it is out of line with the company standards and we tried to be very accomodating at the time of termination. To get this letter a month and a half later was kind of a surprise.

Her letter also refers to severance packages provided to other male executives (I do not know how she has knowledge of these)that exceeded her severance offer of two weeks which is fairly standard at our company. Wem have given 2 weeks severance to all of the people laid off in the last few months and have not had any problems so far. The problem I think with this one is that she was not laid off. She was retained through 2 fairly severe layoffs and the terminated about 3-4 weeks before we did a third mass layoff. Could we attribute her termination to a reduction in force?



>You do have a problem and you should contact an attorney. There are
>several issues that raise questions. First, you have terminated an
>employee who has excellent performance but has an abrasive manner.
>This is certainly contradictory and would create a problem in
>litigation. Second, why is it that she thinks that the new manager
>doesn't want a female on the executive team. Has he said or written
>something that gives that impression? Third, the letter has probably
>been written by an attorney, even though she signed it. Fourth, the
>sexual harassing incidents may be a problem, especially if the new
>manager was involved. If so, you may have an issue of retaliation,
>which might be worse than the harassment itself. Juries do not like
>managers who retaliate. The fact that she did not bring the issues up
>in the letter doesn't get you off the hook in terms of responding to
>the allegations. It only serves as a question of "why not" in
>litigation.
>
>From an "at will" perspective, the sexual harassment/retaliation issue
>would negate "at will" if an issue is really there. Further,
>employees have a right to complain about harassment without being
>retaliated against. It this is has what occured (and you won't know
>without investigating), "at will" won't help because people cannot be
>terminated "at will" for illegal reasons. This would also be true if
>the termination can be connected somehow to her allegation that the
>manager didn't want a female on the executive team.
>
>Depending on how much of a pickle you are in you may find that
>severance and benefits is cheaper than litigation. There is no
>required time frame to respond to the letter but it should be done
>reasonably expeditiously If you really have problems delay only
>serves to anger the other side. The manner in which you respond to
>this will be observed by other employees and if she is a well liked
>employee and you don't repond appropriately there will be negative
>fallout in terms of the perception other employees will have about
>your company.

Gillian

You will probably have a problem characterizing this as a layoff when it appears to be inconsistent with the others and because there is the underlying problem of the employee/supervisor relationship. When layoffs are used as a reason to get rid of some other issue it often comes back to haunt the employer because it doesn't look good. You need legal assistance with this one and there should be some attention paid to evaluating the supervisor and his actions (past and present).