Previous Employee Constructive Discharge ComplaintEssay Preview: Previous Employee Constructive Discharge ComplaintReport this essayMemorandumSenior ManagementHuman ResourcesFrom:Paul TolmanDate:6/9/2013Previous Employee Constructive Discharge ComplaintCONFIDENTIALI have been asked to do some research regarding the constructive discharge complaint that has been brought against us by our former employee after we enacted the policy change on our production work employees. The policy in question has to do with the schedules we now require our production staff to complete. Due to the growth of the company we now require our production staff to work four 12-hour shifts and then they have the next four days off. These work shifts can occur any days of the week Monday through Sunday. The office staff is not required to work this sift. They remain on the Monday through Friday shift working 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
The department of production employees has asked me to look at the case of the former staff member, who reported the harassment to us shortly after we enacted the policy change. While the new policy has been in place as a matter of course I continue to take no action at this time and I am not aware of any other instances in our production work history that have involved direct contact with such individuals. —————————————————————————- From Dr. Karen McRory of the Los Angeles University School of Public Health: I would like to thank you, your colleagues at the Human Resources department, for your excellent research into this matter, and your thoughtful input. I am a professor of public health and the subject of an upcoming book I am writing, The Effects of a Toxic Workplace in the Human Resources Department. While I am not a physician, I am also a member of the University’s Family and Community Service Institute. The American Academy of Public Health uses the term “psychology” to refer to the process by which we measure, track and evaluate our health-care system. It is important to know that the results of the behavioral behavioral-research process used by the Department of Human Resources are not the product of the laboratory. They are the result of some of the greatest efforts to improve the quality of behavioral-research in our department over much of the past half century. As I have explained in my book about the human resources business (as stated in my 2010 introduction, “Who Needs a Medical Examiner?”), there are many factors to consider in determining whether a human employee is at fault here. Some of these factors include the employee’s income pattern. It is therefore important that the level of income of such employees be taken into account in the decision to enter the position. In my experience the highest quality employees are given the highest pay and the highest respect; but low-quality employees are often treated poorly. If a human employee is expected to give their all, in my judgment, then a job on a human research team can be better understood. Also, the position’s performance might not be considered to equal the professional qualifications of a normal human worker. An employee who is expected to perform well on a research team would be well liked by a research team who would be better at their work. —————————————————————————- If an employee is on a human research team and they have no salary, what is the incentive for them to come to the research team after work? A lot of research happens before we start our jobs. In my personal experience, the best paid employees perform at least twice as well as their non-highly paid counterparts. However, once we get past the first year of our contract, the company may be reluctant to let us go. We would prefer to stay. At a high salary, this process of “re-engineering” that occurs when staff member is not able to give their all, especially when a senior engineer or a research engineer is in charge, can be overwhelming. Although I do not personally know or even see these cases, I’m told by human resources folks that they have experienced such situations. Given the high levels of turnover of our human resources department, I would encourage you to see how many workers have to go to school when a senior manager leaves the department and why you should stay. It’s important as individuals to know how many employees you need to let go before it is too late. The current policy for research workers (or “work force reps”) refers to the current contract with the research team. A “work force reps” is not required to move to the Research Work Center. The current contract allows for the research team to move to the Research Work
The department of production employees has asked me to look at the case of the former staff member, who reported the harassment to us shortly after we enacted the policy change. While the new policy has been in place as a matter of course I continue to take no action at this time and I am not aware of any other instances in our production work history that have involved direct contact with such individuals. —————————————————————————- From Dr. Karen McRory of the Los Angeles University School of Public Health: I would like to thank you, your colleagues at the Human Resources department, for your excellent research into this matter, and your thoughtful input. I am a professor of public health and the subject of an upcoming book I am writing, The Effects of a Toxic Workplace in the Human Resources Department. While I am not a physician, I am also a member of the University’s Family and Community Service Institute. The American Academy of Public Health uses the term “psychology” to refer to the process by which we measure, track and evaluate our health-care system. It is important to know that the results of the behavioral behavioral-research process used by the Department of Human Resources are not the product of the laboratory. They are the result of some of the greatest efforts to improve the quality of behavioral-research in our department over much of the past half century. As I have explained in my book about the human resources business (as stated in my 2010 introduction, “Who Needs a Medical Examiner?”), there are many factors to consider in determining whether a human employee is at fault here. Some of these factors include the employee’s income pattern. It is therefore important that the level of income of such employees be taken into account in the decision to enter the position. In my experience the highest quality employees are given the highest pay and the highest respect; but low-quality employees are often treated poorly. If a human employee is expected to give their all, in my judgment, then a job on a human research team can be better understood. Also, the position’s performance might not be considered to equal the professional qualifications of a normal human worker. An employee who is expected to perform well on a research team would be well liked by a research team who would be better at their work. —————————————————————————- If an employee is on a human research team and they have no salary, what is the incentive for them to come to the research team after work? A lot of research happens before we start our jobs. In my personal experience, the best paid employees perform at least twice as well as their non-highly paid counterparts. However, once we get past the first year of our contract, the company may be reluctant to let us go. We would prefer to stay. At a high salary, this process of “re-engineering” that occurs when staff member is not able to give their all, especially when a senior engineer or a research engineer is in charge, can be overwhelming. Although I do not personally know or even see these cases, I’m told by human resources folks that they have experienced such situations. Given the high levels of turnover of our human resources department, I would encourage you to see how many workers have to go to school when a senior manager leaves the department and why you should stay. It’s important as individuals to know how many employees you need to let go before it is too late. The current policy for research workers (or “work force reps”) refers to the current contract with the research team. A “work force reps” is not required to move to the Research Work Center. The current contract allows for the research team to move to the Research Work
The department of production employees has asked me to look at the case of the former staff member, who reported the harassment to us shortly after we enacted the policy change. While the new policy has been in place as a matter of course I continue to take no action at this time and I am not aware of any other instances in our production work history that have involved direct contact with such individuals. —————————————————————————- From Dr. Karen McRory of the Los Angeles University School of Public Health: I would like to thank you, your colleagues at the Human Resources department, for your excellent research into this matter, and your thoughtful input. I am a professor of public health and the subject of an upcoming book I am writing, The Effects of a Toxic Workplace in the Human Resources Department. While I am not a physician, I am also a member of the University’s Family and Community Service Institute. The American Academy of Public Health uses the term “psychology” to refer to the process by which we measure, track and evaluate our health-care system. It is important to know that the results of the behavioral behavioral-research process used by the Department of Human Resources are not the product of the laboratory. They are the result of some of the greatest efforts to improve the quality of behavioral-research in our department over much of the past half century. As I have explained in my book about the human resources business (as stated in my 2010 introduction, “Who Needs a Medical Examiner?”), there are many factors to consider in determining whether a human employee is at fault here. Some of these factors include the employee’s income pattern. It is therefore important that the level of income of such employees be taken into account in the decision to enter the position. In my experience the highest quality employees are given the highest pay and the highest respect; but low-quality employees are often treated poorly. If a human employee is expected to give their all, in my judgment, then a job on a human research team can be better understood. Also, the position’s performance might not be considered to equal the professional qualifications of a normal human worker. An employee who is expected to perform well on a research team would be well liked by a research team who would be better at their work. —————————————————————————- If an employee is on a human research team and they have no salary, what is the incentive for them to come to the research team after work? A lot of research happens before we start our jobs. In my personal experience, the best paid employees perform at least twice as well as their non-highly paid counterparts. However, once we get past the first year of our contract, the company may be reluctant to let us go. We would prefer to stay. At a high salary, this process of “re-engineering” that occurs when staff member is not able to give their all, especially when a senior engineer or a research engineer is in charge, can be overwhelming. Although I do not personally know or even see these cases, I’m told by human resources folks that they have experienced such situations. Given the high levels of turnover of our human resources department, I would encourage you to see how many workers have to go to school when a senior manager leaves the department and why you should stay. It’s important as individuals to know how many employees you need to let go before it is too late. The current policy for research workers (or “work force reps”) refers to the current contract with the research team. A “work force reps” is not required to move to the Research Work Center. The current contract allows for the research team to move to the Research Work
Constructive discharge is defined as an employee feeling they have been discriminated against by having the working conditions he or she is working in to be so harsh and intolerable that they are considered unreasonable to normal working conditions and therefore they cannot continue to work under these conditions so they resign their position. The distraught employee feels they have been forced to quit because of the circumstances they have been made to work in; so their quitting would be no different than being terminated from the company.
One issue to take into consideration in this case is how this employee resigned. Constructive discharge can only be claimed by an individual if one of the two things has not been done before the individual resigned. First there must be proof that a difficult or hostile condition exists in the work environment. There must be proof that a normal employee would quit under these same circumstances. Also the employee must give the employer 15 days notice that the conditions are unacceptable and the employer must not respond within that time frame.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals against employment discrimination on the bases of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion. (“Society,” 2013) This protection applies to employees of any company that employees more than 15 individuals and includes both state and local government entities. Equal employment opportunities cant be denied to any person based on any of the named reasons above. Not only can they not be denied for these reasons, they cannot be denied for a perceived racial group or any characteristic that might link that person to a specified race for example hairstyles, skin color, or facial features. Title VII prohibits organizations from discriminating against any individual in regards to recruiting, work assignments or schedules, any hiring or promotion procedures, transfers, performance measures, the general working environment, job training, any discipline or discharge of employees, wage or benefits, or any other term, condition or benefit of employment.
CONFIDENTIALTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does state that our organization cannot discriminate against employees based on religion or religious beliefs. In our case we have not discriminated against anyone based on religious beliefs. We have mandated that all of our production staff work this new four on four off shift. It was not our intention to create hardships for our staff in making this change. The decision to move to this new shift was based on our company needs. Our production teams were not able to keep up with the demands on our business while working a normal 8 to 5 shift. If we were to take everyones religious beliefs into account for our scheduling we could stand to lose money causing the company and undue expense. The EEOC states Title VII prohibits “denying a requested reasonable accommodation of an applicants or employees sincerely held religious beliefs or practices – or lack thereof – if an accommodation will not impose more than a de minimis cost or burden on business operations.” (“Questions.” 2011). In our case we do not have to accommodate this employees religious beliefs because it would cause more than a minimum cost to our company in order to do so. We were also never approached with alternatives that would reasonably accommodate this employee and the company at the same time.
CONFIDENTIALIn the Supreme Court case of Trans World Airlines, Inc. (TWA) v. Hardison the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the airline as the employee brought a case against them for religious discrimination. TWA had one of its manufacturing plants in Kansas City, Missouri. Hardison was employed there. This department operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It was important to the plant that there be someone staffed in this area full time. After coming to work at TWA, this employee began to study the religion of the Worldwide Church of God. The church taught that their Sabbath should be observed from sundown Friday evening until sundown Saturday evening. The members of this church were to refrain from working during that period of time. The work schedules were controlled by collective bargaining agreements and those included provisions that allowed schedule bidding based on seniority in the company.
There were no conflicts from Hardisons religious beliefs in the beginning due to his willingness to work the night shift and he had seniority in his area so he could avoid having to work on his Sabbath. The issue came up when he transferred to a different area that had a different seniority system in place. A need came up for Hardison to work a Saturday shift which created the conflict. TWA allowed the union to look for a change in his work assignment. The union refused to meet this request due to it violating the seniority provisions of their agreement. Hardison extended and offer to the company to work four-day workweeks as long as that would allow him to not have to work on Saturday. This proposal was rejected by TWA. The proposal would not allow for the full time coverage needed for the operation of the business. If Harden did not complete this shift then another manager or employee would have to cover this shift and it would cause hardship on the other areas of the company and could cause the company to have to pay overtime. An agreement could not be reached between the two parties and Hardison did not show up for his shift and was fired.
CONFIDENTIALA study by Pearce II, Kuhn and DiLullo (2005) found the following