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U.S. Master™ Wage-Hour Guide, 2009 Edition
Presents a first approach to the broad and complex controls under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and other statutes regulating employee wages and hours.
An en banc Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that daily exposure to office talk and radio programming that was particularly offensive to women but not overtly targeted at a female employee was sufficient for that employee to establish a hostile work environment sexual harassment claim under Title VII (Reeves v C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc, 11thCir, January 20, 2010).
The employee worked as a sales representative in a workstation pod cubicle near other sales representatives who were all men. She was the only female working in her area. The employee alleged, that on a daily basis, her male coworkers (including her direct supervisor) used sexually derogatory and sexually explicit, crude language and listened to a morning radio program featuring sexually explicit and offensive language played on the stereo in the office. She testified that the offensive office talk and radio programming continued even after numerous complaints to her coworkers and her supervisor. The Eleventh Circuit determined that a triable issues existed as to whether the employee was subject to a hostile work environment “based on” her sex because the language had a discriminatory effect due to its degrading nature, even though she was not the direct target of it and the environment existed prior to her arrival. In addition, the court ruled that even if the male coworkers used sexually derogatory and sexually explicit, language to refer to both men and women, that did not mean these terms themselves were not gender-specific because such usage did not make these epithets any less offensive to women on account of sex. (The previous three-judge panel decision and judgment in the case, issued on April 28, 2008, was vacated on May 29, 2009).
For more information on this and other topics, consult CCH Employment Practices Guide or CCH Labor Relations.
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