It’s an unfortunate reality that even here in Burbank, California in the 21st-century, it’s still possible to experience discrimination at work. If you’re being discriminated against, or even if you’re not sure but suspect it, talk with an employment attorney quickly to find out more about your rights and how to protect them.
What Steps Should You Take If You Experience Discrimination in Burbank, California?
Contact an Employment Attorney
Step one is to talk with a qualified and experienced attorney who understands employment law in California. An attorney will be able to tell you if what you are experiencing is discrimination, legally speaking, and then help you understand what all the next steps should be to deal with the situation. Having an attorney can also protect you if you are worried about retaliation if you report the discrimination.
Document
If you suspect discrimination, and particularly if you’ve talked to an attorney and have some confirmation that what you’re experiencing really is discrimination, you need to start documenting everything. After any incident that seems discriminatory to you, make a detailed record of everything that was said and done while it’s still fresh in your mind.
Write down the date, time, the details of what happens, exactly who is involved, and the names of anyone who witnessed it. The sooner you do this after an incident, the fresher your memories will be (and the more likely a court is to find it compelling). If you get emails or text messages that have anything to do with the incident (or are incidents in themselves), be sure to save all of these. This kind of documentation will be very important in proving your case if you need to file a complaint or even a lawsuit.
Speak to Your Employer
There are a couple reasons that you should bring up this issue with your employer directly (or at least with your human resources department). First, sometimes you can actually resolve these issues just by talking to your employer. They may not be aware of someone acting in a discriminatory way and may take immediate and forceful action to bring an end into it. This would be best for you and everyone in the company.
However, there’s another important reason for you to report what’s going on, and that is because the law requires you to do so before you can bring a complaint, and potentially a lawsuit. You will need to be able to show that you followed your company’s internal procedures for handling discrimination and offered them the opportunity to fix the issue before you can be allowed to bring any kind of claim against them. You’ll need to be able to show that you did all this and that the company did not satisfactory resolve the issue.
Find out the internal process required for your company, which may start with talking to your immediate superior or may direct you to go straight to human resources. Make sure that you get copies of all documentation and ask these entities to give you documentation, even if that’s just an email, acknowledging that you’ve had the conversation and explaining what the next steps are or what they plan to do (or not do). If your immediate supervisor is the problem, then go to the person above them.
If you have genuine reason to fear for your immediate safety by bringing a complaint, be sure to talk to your lawyer before doing anything. However, this is rare. In most cases, retaliation is the worst thing to worry about, and we’ll get into that in a moment. Your lawyer can help you to be prepared for retaliation and to fight back against it.
Filing a Complaint
If your employer doesn’t resolve the issue satisfactorily, you can then escalate the issue by making a formal complaint to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH). This entity is the one that has been tasked with enforcing our state’s anti-discrimination laws, as well as investigating any complaints about discrimination.
Again, this is a step you must follow. You cannot bring a lawsuit unless you have first brought a complaint with the DFEH and given them a chance to investigate and resolve the issue between you and your employer. If the investigation shows evidence of discrimination, the DFEH may do one of two things. First, they may work together with you and your employer to try to settle things. Or, they may simply give you permission to file a lawsuit through a “right-to-sue” notice.
Consider Mediation or Settlement
Many of these complaints get resolved through mediation, and your lawyer will help you in this process to make sure that all settlements are fair to you and take into account California’s laws about discrimination. Mediation is often faster and easier for everyone than a lawsuit, and your employer may offer you a settlement at any point during the DFEH investigation or during mediation. Just be sure not to sign any settlement agreements until you have run them by your lawyer to make sure they are truly in your best interests.
Bring a Lawsuit
If you can’t come to a settlement through mediation, then you may have to take the final step and go to court. You’ll especially need to have an attorney helping you at this point, and you want someone who has plenty of experience in workplace discrimination and who knows how to put pressure on your employer, properly investigate your case, and represent you with compelling arguments in the courtroom.
Be aware that state law requires you to file a complaint with DFEH within a year of experiencing discrimination, and if they give you a right-to-sue notice, you then have just one more year to bring your lawsuit. If you don’t meet these deadlines, you won’t be able to pursue a claim, so it’s always important to talk with an employment lawyer without too much delay so at least you know where you stand.
Protect Yourself from Retaliation
As mentioned above, any employee bringing a complaint about discrimination will naturally worry about retaliation. Retaliation can happen when an employer fires an employee for making a complaint, of course, but that’s only the most overt type of retaliation. Other, sneakier ways to try to “punish” an employee for making a complaint include demoting them, suddenly giving them poor performance reviews, switching them to undesirable work schedules, or making the general environment of the workplace intolerable.
Retaliation is illegal, and you can make a separate complaint about this and take legal action against your employer. Even if the DFEH finds that there was no discrimination, so long as you made the complaint in good faith, retaliation is illegal, and your employer can be punished for it even if they didn’t discriminate against you initially.
Contact Our Employment Law Attorneys
Contact the experience team of attorneys of Haig B. Kazandjian Lawyers APC today. We proudly serve clients across California. Visit us at our Glendale office at:
Haig B. Kazandjian Lawyers APC
801 N. Brand Blvd., Suite 1015,
Glendale, CA 91203
Phone: (818) 696 2306
