Los Angeles Workplace Retaliation Attorney

Proving Workplace Retaliation in California

To prove retaliation in the workplace, a Los Angeles worker must establish a correlation between the complaint of unlawful behavior and act of workplace retaliation in question. Providing a timeline of events is an effective strategy in proving direct correlation between your complaint and your employer’s repercussive measures.

California workplace retaliation law also takes into account the severity of consequences in retaliation in the workplace cases. The retaliation must have been severe enough for a reasonable person to have avoided raising the issue had the consequence been known in advance.

For example, if an employee in California reports an incident of sexual harassment in the workplace and later demoted, he or she may have thought twice before filing the complaint if they had known it would lead to their demotion.

Proving workplace retaliation can be difficult, because many employees are employed “at-will.” California at-will employment means workers do not have employment contracts. The at-will employer or employee can terminate the relationship at any time, for any reason. This is not to say that an at-will worker does not receive employee retaliation protection on the job. Every employee has protection from workplace retaliation under federal and California labor laws and the Whistleblower Protection Act.