California employment laws protect employees against wrongful termination in many circumstances. Fortunately, there are also laws that forbid the employer from retaliating against an employee who has engaged in a protected activity, such as reporting discrimination or illegal activity in the workplace. Retaliation for engaging in a legally protected activity does not have to be a wrongful termination, and often comes in a form of lesser punishments designed to pressure the employee to resign on their own accord.
Finding legal remedies for these types of cases is more difficult for the average lawyer, but our MLG attorneys are skilled in developing the legal arguments necessary to provide our clients the full protection of California law.
In most cases, employees report an issue within the workplace to their immediate manager. An employer can respond to these complaints in many ways. One option would be to do the right thing by rectifying the situation. Unfortunately, too many of California’s employers choose a different option:
- Retaliation in the form of reduced hours
- Pay cuts
- Suspensions
- Transfers
- Unjustified negative performance reviews
- Or other adverse employment actions.
Some employers make conditions so unbearable that anyone in the employee’s situation would feel forced to quit their job, so the employee submits their resignation. When this happens, the employee did not really resign, rather they were constructively terminated. An employer might constructively terminate an employee in order to avoid paying unemployment benefits to the employee or to avoid a claim of wrongful termination. After all, if the employee “resigned” then they would not have been “terminated”. Luckily, our seasoned employment attorneys know when an employee was constructively terminated and are able fight on your behalf.
If you are being retaliated against, please contact our skilled employment attorneys so they can assess your claims.
