California employment laws provide some of the toughest and most thorough protections for employees in the entire country. These include the right to work free retaliation, discrimination, and sexual harassment. In spite of these laws, employees far too often find these important rights violated, and are victims of traumatic sexual harassment, discriminatory employment decisions, and retaliation for engaging in lawful activities.
One of the questions that can arise in the course of lawsuit regarding employer misconduct is whether the employee’s supervisor received adequate training from the employer. In fact, state employers and private employers with fifty plus employees are required to provide training to supervisors.
- State employers have significantly higher training requirements than in the private sector. Supervisory employees are required to complete a mandatory 80 hour training that encompasses a broad range of topics, including the legal rights or employees and compliance with those laws.
- AB 1825, created in 2004, created a requirement that employers with 50 or more employees provide a mandatory 2 hour training to supervisors. This training is the bare minimum and was designed to educate supervisors regarding sexual harassment, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation by employers. This training is required every two years.
- AB 2053, created in 2014, expanded the preexisting training to include training on the prevention of “abusive conduct”. This is workplace conduct “with malice, that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.” Given exampled of abusive conduct include “repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance.”
- SB 396, which took effect on January 1st of this year, expanded sexual harassment training to encompass the prevention of harassment based upon on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.
While mandatory training by itself is not a source of significant damages against an employer, it is an important piece of the bigger picture as to whether an employer has taken the issues of workplace sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation seriously.
Moss Bollinger Stands Up For Employees
If you have been the subject of discrimination, sexual harassment, or retaliation, you need an attorney. The Moss Bollinger law firm fights for the legal rights of employees against employers that act improperly, or worse, fail to act when necessary. Employers have a duty to provide employees with a safe workplace that is free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Failure to meet this duty means that you may be entitled to damages. Our office works on a contingency basis and does not collect any up front fees. Contact Moss Bollinger at (866) 535-2994 for a free consultation or submit our online form.