Los Angeles Employment Law Blog

The workers in Amazon's facilities throughout North America are largely invisible to online shoppers in California. A new complaint received by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reveals that some workers allegedly face a hostile atmosphere on the job. The workers' rights group Muslim Advocates filed the complaint on behalf of three Muslim Somali women who claim to have suffered religious discrimination and retaliation.

According to the complaint, Amazon management at the facility disapproved of the three women taking time for prayers. The women said that praying would result in write-ups that could eventually lead to their termination. The women also alleged that management favored white workers with promotions and easier work duties while discriminating against Somali employees. When the women approached human resources with their complaints about unfair disciplinary write-ups, the company's investigation allegedly failed to identify any evidence to support their claims. One woman said that management retaliated against her for complaining with an additional write-up.

Generally speaking, companies around the country are not allowed to make employment decisions based on an employee's gender. A woman has filed a lawsuit against Northern California-based PayPal Holdings, Inc., claiming that she was passed over for a job because of travel requirements and the fact that she had a young child. However, she claims that she had previously lived in Europe and traveled internationally many times in the past.

The lawsuit states that she did not receive an interview for the position and that it was ultimately given to a male colleague who also had a child. That person had been under the plaintiff's supervision from 2012 to 2015, and the complaint says that he was not as qualified as she was. Furthermore, the complaint alleges that the woman's supervisor was not comfortable around women, which may have resulted in a man getting the promotion.

For LGBT workers in California, workplace discrimination continues to be a major concern. The U.S. Supreme Court will be taking up a case to assess once more whether or not federal civil rights law provides nationwide protection against discrimination on the job on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The high court said that it will hear some cases alleging that the plaintiffs were fired due to their sexual orientation as well as the case of a funeral home worker who was fired after announcing she was transitioning to living as a woman.

Decisions are likely to come down by June 2020, while the presidential election campaign will be in full swing. The cases hinges on whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also provides protection to LGBT people under its framework prohibiting sex discrimination. The law does not explicitly mention sexual orientation or gender identity, but several federal appeals courts have affirmed a reading of the law that situates protection for LGBT workers within the law's prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex. Courts in Chicago and New York applied the framework to protect lesbian and gay workers, while a Cincinnati court did the same for transgender people.

Female workers throughout the country made $900 billion less than their male counterparts in 2018. Research suggests that lower wages aren't the only issue that California women face in the workplace. In addition for being paid less for equal work, they are also more likely to be punished for minor transgressions while on the job. A study asked 159 people to read scenarios about infractions committed on the job.

The names in the people in the scenarios were chosen to make them sound as if they were either white or black. For instance, a person named Jamal was likely to be identified as black while someone named Greg would be seen as white. The white males who took part in reading the scenarios for the study were more likely to go easy on other white males. However, they tended to be heavy handed on those who were black or female.