Cross Dressing at Work
AnneLa
328 Posts
Does anyone have any experience with an employee cross dresing at work (I'm serious). We have an employee who is a new hire and slowly unveiling his likes and dislikes to our staff. He was recently seen cross dressing in public. He is also inviting staff to go and see him perform in an all male, Female Star, review. I think that cross dressing is a protected activity, but we have a somewhat conservative culture when it comes to dress code. Any help or guidance here would be GREATLY appreciated.
Comments
Sorry--I re-read your post. How employees dress on their own time away from the company is their business. He can wear a pink tutu to the mall, and it is none of our business.
Just my opinion.
In most states you could successfully fire this person unless it could be shown convincingly to a jury or the EEOC that you terminated for legitimately protected status (age, race, sex, religion, disability).
Typically you could act on this the same as you would if you had an employee who appeared as a punchinello on a street corner every Saturday morning from 8:00 till 1:00.
Linda
I knew some day my SHRM membership would get me more than a cup of Joe. But I'm still waiting on PHR/SPHR-only bennies
By all accounts, Peter Oiler was a competent truck driver with a 20-year record of exemplary service at Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. He showed up on time, performed his duties well and caused no problems while on the job. But it was his off-the-job behavior—cross dressing—that ultimately got him fired in January 2000. The 47-year-old resident of Avondale, La., likes to wear women’s clothing, accessories, makeup, wigs and fake breasts. He usually adopts the persona of “Donna” at home but sometimes goes out with his wife and friends to restaurants, the shopping mall and church. Upon learning of his non-mainstream activities, Winn-Dixie terminated Oiler. The company’s managers said their customers might shop elsewhere if they recognized “Donna” in public as a company employee, court records show. “His activity could harm the company image,” Oiler’s supervisor said, according to the complaint Oiler filed in federal court. But Oiler says he had no contact with shoppers, and he sued Winn-Dixie for sex discrimination, alleging the company fired him because he did not conform to the gender stereotype of a man.
“Everyone agrees he was not terminated for anything related to his job performance,” says Ken Choe, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney based in New York who represented Oiler. “All of the cross-dressing behavior occurred off the job,” and Oiler never violated Winn-Dixie’s dress code, Choe adds.
Mickey Clerc, vice president of public relations for Winn-Dixie, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based company that operates supermarkets in 14 states, would not comment on the case.
The company prevailed in September, when a federal judge in New Orleans ruled that federal and state laws prohibiting sex discrimination do not apply to “transgendered” people—those whose gender identity does not consistently match their biological sex.
While Winn-Dixie won in a court of law, the company may have lost ground in the court of public and employee opinion. The case generated a lot of media coverage; it also generated sympathy among Oiler’s closest co-workers.
“Quite a few people told me, ‘You’re not hurting anybody. You do your job extremely well. How can they do this?’” says Oiler, who decided not to appeal and now drives trucks for a Texas-based pet-supply company.
“The common theme [among former co-workers] was, ‘If they can get away with this, what can they do to me?’” he says. “It’s got a lot of people saying, ‘Where’s the limit?’”
Oiler’s case shows some of the difficulties companies may face when dealing with termination for off-duty conduct. Lawsuits from ex-employees, negative publicity, low morale and related turnover are among the potential results when employees are fired for off-the-job behavior.
Yet, on the other hand, employers also shouldn’t keep employees whose after-work activities affect their performance on the job, hurt staff morale or damage the company’s image.
So what’s an HR professional to do?
In such situations, HR must walk a fine line—one that varies with the facts in each specific case. Writing universal policies that govern all “questionable” off-duty behaviors is impractical and could be perceived as Big Brother-ish by employees.
“If you try to have a black-and-white policy, you’ll be second-guessing it and harming good people,” says Mary C. Cheddie, SPHR, vice president of HR at Orvis Co. in Manchester, Vt., and a member of the SHRM Board of Directors. “It’s not a textbook science. It’s a case-by-case situation where you have to access as many facts as you can.”
Ultimately, when deciding whether to terminate employees for off-duty behavior, HR professionals will need to ask, and answer, two important questions:
* Are there any special legal factors at issue in this case?
* What effect, if any, does the off-duty behavior have on the employee’s job performance, the workplace or the company’s image?
The more off-duty behavior negatively affects workplace performance or the business as a whole, the more valid termination becomes as an option—provided no special legal protection exists.