Sexual harassment letter

standem

In mid March, we terminated an employee with noted excellent performance at the request of her new supervisor (he had been her supervisor for 3 months) for having an abrasive manner. Although we gave her the option to resign first (she accepted then refused to resign)she was terminated.

She told me at a meeting right after her termination that she has spoken to an attorney and feels that her supervisor requested her termination because he did not want a woman on his executive team (which she was a member of prior to his taking the position above her). She was only with the company for a year however we are somewhat of a start-up and relative to many employees she joined early on in the organizations development (company formed as a spinoff in '99).

We did not hear anything again until a couple of weeks ago when we received a letter requesting severance equivalent to her salary for the remainder of the year plus a couple of other compensatory items such as continued benefits through September, a bonus that was not paid, payment of a flex reimbursement claim we processed for her but is still pending etc.

She mentioned several harrassing incidents to me at the meeting right after her termination but did not bring them up in the letter and we do have evidence of her style being not so friendly on the job but are not sure what documentation she has. She has not yet filed an eeoc claim, and is receiving unemployment, she was an at will employee, and we are in Calif.

What kind of a time frame do we have to respond to this letter, or do we have to at all?

CuriousG

I would suggest you not delay in responding, any longer than it takes to review this situation with compentent legal counsel. You should initiate an inquiry into the sexual harassment and sex discrimination allegations made in the termination interview. Even if nothing comes of it, it will have been an excellent exercise for a young company to see the realities of loose talk, and looser policies.

Your Attorney will instruct you on how to conduct an effective and quick investigation. It might even be good at this point to have the attorney actually do the inquiry so that his findings can be protected by Attorney Work Product rules.

Just remember, this employee's "demands" do not define what has to be a final settlement. If, and it is a big if, you find your are "a little pregnant" on the sexual harassment or discrimination issues you should look at what would be reasonable and negotiate with the former employee's attorney. In the end, you will want to be sure your Attorney gets you a fully enforceable release from this employee of all employment related claims in return for any settlement you may pay her.

Gillian

You do have a problem and you should contact an attorney. There are several issues that raise questions. First, you have terminated an employee who has excellent performance but has an abrasive manner. This is certainly contradictory and would create a problem in litigation. Second, why is it that she thinks that the new manager doesn't want a female on the executive team. Has he said or written something that gives that impression? Third, the letter has probably been written by an attorney, even though she signed it. Fourth, the sexual harassing incidents may be a problem, especially if the new manager was involved. If so, you may have an issue of retaliation, which might be worse than the harassment itself. Juries do not like managers who retaliate. The fact that she did not bring the issues up in the letter doesn't get you off the hook in terms of responding to the allegations. It only serves as a question of "why not" in litigation.

From an "at will" perspective, the sexual harassment/retaliation issue would negate "at will" if an issue is really there. Further, employees have a right to complain about harassment without being retaliated against. It this is has what occured (and you won't know without investigating), "at will" won't help because people cannot be terminated "at will" for illegal reasons. This would also be true if the termination can be connected somehow to her allegation that the manager didn't want a female on the executive team.

Depending on how much of a pickle you are in you may find that severance and benefits is cheaper than litigation. There is no required time frame to respond to the letter but it should be done reasonably expeditiously If you really have problems delay only serves to anger the other side. The manner in which you respond to this will be observed by other employees and if she is a well liked employee and you don't repond appropriately there will be negative fallout in terms of the perception other employees will have about your company.

Paul

The two responses above were excellent. You are well advised to seek legal counsel on this ASAP. If it does come to the point where a release agreement is executed, make sure that your attorney has factored in the OWBPA aspect if the employee is over 40 years old. A good attorney will automatically do this, but you still need to check.

standem

The employee was often described as uncooperative, but I am not sure at this point if this an outgrowth of communication issues, hers and/or those within the company. She was not an extremely popular employee but she did have quite a few people who did like her a lot and her work was known to be top quality. At this point I am not sure what she thinks that her new manager did not want female executives but personnel records show that 2 other female managers were terminated while working under this partcular senior manager, which makes me worry. The harassing incidents she mentioned to me involved the manager in question specifically and solely as the harasser.She is asking for a fairly large amount, I think it is out of line with the company standards and we tried to be very accomodating at the time of termination. To get this letter a month and a half later was kind of a surprise.


Her letter also refers to severance packages provided to other male executives (I do not know how she has knowledge of these)that exceeded her severance offer of two weeks which is fairly standard at our company. Wem have given 2 weeks severance to all of the people laid off in the last few months and have not had any problems so far. The problem I think with this one is that she was not laid off. She was retained through 2 fairly severe layoffs and the terminated about 3-4 weeks before we did a third mass layoff. Could we attribute her termination to a reduction in force?





>You do have a problem and you should contact an attorney. There are
>several issues that raise questions. First, you have terminated an
>employee who has excellent performance but has an abrasive manner.
>This is certainly contradictory and would create a problem in
>litigation. Second, why is it that she thinks that the new manager
>doesn't want a female on the executive team. Has he said or written
>something that gives that impression? Third, the letter has probably
>been written by an attorney, even though she signed it. Fourth, the
>sexual harassing incidents may be a problem, especially if the new
>manager was involved. If so, you may have an issue of retaliation,
>which might be worse than the harassment itself. Juries do not like
>managers who retaliate. The fact that she did not bring the issues up
>in the letter doesn't get you off the hook in terms of responding to
>the allegations. It only serves as a question of "why not" in
>litigation.
>
>From an "at will" perspective, the sexual harassment/retaliation issue
>would negate "at will" if an issue is really there. Further,
>employees have a right to complain about harassment without being
>retaliated against. It this is has what occured (and you won't know
>without investigating), "at will" won't help because people cannot be
>terminated "at will" for illegal reasons. This would also be true if
>the termination can be connected somehow to her allegation that the
>manager didn't want a female on the executive team.
>
>Depending on how much of a pickle you are in you may find that
>severance and benefits is cheaper than litigation. There is no
>required time frame to respond to the letter but it should be done
>reasonably expeditiously If you really have problems delay only
>serves to anger the other side. The manner in which you respond to
>this will be observed by other employees and if she is a well liked
>employee and you don't repond appropriately there will be negative
>fallout in terms of the perception other employees will have about
>your company.