Communicating with employees is key when a PR crisis strikes

Lots has been said about how United Airlines mishandled violently dragging a passenger from an overbooked flight. And none of it is good. Yet, make no mistake, how United CEO Oscar Munoz communicated with his company’s employees immediately following the incident did not do anything to make it any better.

United CEO email to employees obtained by ABC's @Shahriar44R: "there are lessons we can learn from this experience" pic.twitter.com/N1TbohuRc3

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) April 10, 2017

Bill O’Reilly and Fox News teach us how not to ignore workplace harassment

Bill O’Reilly’s (alleged) lewd comments and inappropriate come-ons may have finally caught up to him and his employer, Fox News. I don’t, however, want to focus my attention on the salacious allegations, which are just that, allegation. Instead, I’d like to focus on Fox News’s response to the allegations, as to why it has so dragged its feet to do anything in response.

I’ll let John Oliver explain only as he can.

Promotion after protected activity dooms employees retaliation claim

What does unlawful retaliation not look like? Burton v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Wisc. Sys. (7th Cir. 3/17/17) offers a good example.

WIRTW #456 (the “new music Friday” edition)

I’m always on the lookout for new bands. This week brings us a good one—Diet Cig, whose debut album drops today. Enjoy.


Here’s what I read this week:

A lesson on workplace posters from, of all places, Homeland

If you’re on Homeland, and operating a covert, CIA backed, sock-puppet misinformation operation, where do you hang your workplace posters? In your interrogation room, of course.

State and federal laws require that all employers have posters conspicuously placed in the workplace. 

7th Circuit historically holds that Title VII expressly bans LGBT discrimination

If you spend any time reading or watching the news today, you will inevitably encounter much about the 7th Circuit’s historic (and correct, in my opinion) decision in Hivley v. Ivy Tech Community College [pdf]. You can read the background of this case here.

The court expressly held that “a person who alleges that she experienced employment discrimination on the basis of her sexual orientation has put forth a case of sex discrimination for Title VII purposes.” Hivley now stands in direct contradiction to the opinion of the 11th Circuit in Evans v. Georgia Regional Hosp., which sets up this issue for a showdown in the Supreme Court.

The adverse action standard for retaliation is low (but not this low)

The legal standard for an “adverse action” to support a claim for workplace retaliation is pretty low. How low? According to the Supreme Court, an adverse action sufficient to support a claim for retaliation is any action that would dissuade a reasonable worker from complaining about discrimination.

But, is does it reach this low? In Bien-Aime v. Equity Residential (S.D.N.Y. 2/22/17), a federal court concluded that two managers’ general rudeness towards the plaintiff, which started only after the plaintiff filed a civil rights complaint, stood as a sufficient adverse action to support his retaliation claim.