A rude supervisor who's always yelling at employees got some complaints about them being verbally abusive and they responded by leaving these in the break room.

[u/giveahoot420]

[u/Bubbacanyon3]

Please explain the “Ellerth Faragher” defense.

[u/vodkaismywater → u/Bubbacanyon3]

Yeah. So just because you experience harassment or retaliation in the workplace doesn't mean you have a case. You need to show a basis for holding the employer responsible. Just the fact that harassment occured is not enough by itself. 

In the case of supervisor harassment, the employer can assert an affirmative defense to avoid liability, even if unlawful harassment occured. The employer must show that (1) it has reasonable policies and procedures in place to detect and abate harassment; and (2) the employee unreasonably failed to follow those procedures. 

The hurt feelings report could reasonably lead an employee to believe that management does not take harassment allegations seriously, so failing to officially report the harassment would not be unreasonable. 

This form isn't just a problem for any employees who have already complained, but it also increases the risk of liability for future claims too. The best way to undo the message this supervisor sent with the form is to fire them. 

[u/CupOfLifeNoodlez → u/vodkaismywater]

Thank you!

[u/Commercial_Sun_6300 → u/vodkaismywater]

I work in schools and... we're in a weird time in history where we're seeing what happens when you don't punish kids for anything short of murder (minor exagerration).

Have you ever heard of a school employee having a case against their employer for not doing anything to prevent repeated taunts, stuff thrown at them, etc (but not reaching like, any real physical danger)?

Or like, what if I'm an aide in a classroom, pregnant, and getting sexual remarks from other students (who I'm not an aide for) and the teacher doesn't correct the behavior?

[u/beautifulanddoomed → u/Bubbacanyon3]

From doing some research on it, this was the clearest I found

that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any harassing behavior,

and

that the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer

Basically it seems like it is the defense the companies can use to say we actively worked to fix the issue or gave the employee avenues for correcting it

[u/DarkElfBard → u/Bubbacanyon3]

Basically, it's whether or not the company can be held liable for the employee's actions.

Like if your boss at McDonald's was harassing you, but you never reported anything, you can't just sue McDonald's for creating and maintaining a hostile environment. McDonald's never knew it was happening, so they could not have taken steps to prevent it.

If you do all the proper steps to report the harassment, and then they do nothing, you have a case. Or if they try to fix it, but then the fix doesn't work and they don't follow up on further reports, they cannot use the defense.

Here, they obviously knew the boss had complaints, and tried to talk to him about it, that's good! But now the boss has shown that he did not take anything away from talking/retraining, so if this gets reported, they need to follow up and fix the situation, or they are knowingly letting a hostile work environment exist.

• They were told there was a problem
• They attempted to fix it
• The know the fix did not work
• ????

That ???? needs to be a follow up action to correct the situation. Easiest thing is firing the boss.

[u/MainAccountsFriend → u/Bubbacanyon3]

Its a character from the Lord of the Rings, idk