San Francisco, CA employment attorney Traci M. Hinden talks about the protections you have from employer retaliation. She describes retaliation as occurring when an employee engages in protected activity, whether for themselves or on behalf of someone else, and the employer subsequently changes the employee’s workplace circumstances because of that activity. She notes that protected activity can include requesting a reasonable accommodation, asking for a workplace safety measure, questioning whether conduct is lawful, reporting suspected illegal activity, or raising concerns about wages, such as unpaid hours or failure to pay overtime after eight hours in a day in California. She emphasizes that once an employee engages in these types of activities, they may receive legal protection against retaliation.

She also provides an example involving an employee who witnesses misconduct toward a coworker and either reports it or participates in an HR investigation. This could include witnessing a manager physically assault someone, use abusive language, or treat a coworker in a discriminatory manner during a workplace meeting. She notes that if the employee’s workplace circumstances change shortly afterward, such as having their hours or pay reduced, being demoted, being scheduled less frequently, or receiving an unexpected disciplinary write-up, those actions may be indicators of retaliation.

She points out that retaliation can sometimes involve selectively enforcing workplace rules against an employee when those same rules are not enforced against others. For example, an employee may receive a disciplinary write-up for conduct that other employees engage in without consequence, suggesting that the employer may be treating the employee differently because of their protected activity. She explains that these types of negative workplace actions are commonly referred to in the legal field as adverse actions because they negatively affect the employee.

She further clarifies that although retaliation protections are intended to protect an employee’s job, the protection does not necessarily prevent an employer from taking adverse action in the first place. Instead, the legal protection generally becomes actionable after the employee experiences a retaliatory act, at which point the employee may need to raise the issue or pursue a legal claim. She notes that in some situations, an employee may ultimately lose their job after experiencing a series of retaliatory adverse actions.