“God Bless Us, Everyone”

Most of us know this quote, the character who states it, and in what story. It is the exclamation that assures us all’s right with the world, after all. Greed and an old sourpuss do not prevail. The statement is uncomplicated, clear, succinct – like my sister’s philosophy of life – “Just be nice to each other.” And, I hear you sigh: “If only it were that simple”.

Ok, so it isn’t. Get over it. Life is all grey when you are in the HR business. I taught a class in Sexual Harassment Prevention for Supervisors at a Valley fruit packing house last week and the owner of the company kept saying “But they won’t listen,” and “OK, but what if this happened instead . . .?” He wanted to hear a yes or no, black or white answer to situations that never are. The best I could do was to tell him his job (and that of his supervisors) was to create an atmosphere of respect and enforce it. Model it.

My favorite of his scenario/questions was this: “What if some male employees are at lunch at a restaurant and an effeminate man walks by and they call him a ‘fag’, and one of the guys at the table is a closeted homosexual: is that harassment?” I was ready with my standard HR response: “It depends.” But before I could elaborate or say “What kind of morons are you hiring, who think it’s OK to talk like that, especially in public, for God's sake?” he said it had happened at a previous job. And the guy had claimed harassment and “got some money for it”.

I often respond to a scenario like that by telling them to turn it around: pretend the person who walked by was an elderly woman, or a beautiful woman, or a person in a wheelchair. Would the morons at lunch have said one was an “old hag”, the next a “whore”, and the last a “cripple”? Certainly not. My point was that if appropriate, respectful behavior can be learned in those instances, it can be learned for all instances. We must model and demand decent behavior if we don't want to run the risk of losing “some money for it.”

New stats have been released that remind me of all the ways we find to be mean to each other. (It’s like watching Law and Order on TV – what will some maniac come up with this week?)The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has just had its three busiest years in a row. (And "that's nothin' to be proud of, Rusty").Charges in FY 2010 numbered over 99,000! I expect we'll see retaliation, race, religious, and disability discrimination top the list again this year.

Please don't dismiss these numbers by saying they are caused by new laws and/or the high unemployment rate. Yes, those things have an impact, but we let ourselves off the hook if we find solace in those excuses rather than acknowledging our duty as employers to demand that our employees be civil to each other. Besides, nobody wants to work with a bunch of Scrooges.

Blackmail, I-9 Style

Here's a new one: a former employee contacts a current employee and tells him if he doesn't support the former employee, the former employee will reveal that he (the current employee) is an illegal alien. So the current employee tells his boss about the threat -- he doesn't even know what the former employee is talking about. "Support him" in what?? But he knows a threat when he hears one.

Background: The former employee and others were laid off when business slowed, and subsequently claimed they didn't get their meal and rest breaks. Labor Commissioner found for the employer!

Question: This sounds like revenge against the employer, but is still a threat to the employee. Does the employer now have knowledge that the existing employee is not properly documented?