A hostile work environment isn’t always illegal. It might be awful and a horrible place to work, but not illegal. North Carolina employment attorney Kathryn Abernethy discusses what the differences are and why it can be so complicated. With years of experience in Raleigh working these cases, attorney Abernethy understands when that switch gets flipped from bad to illegal. This is part of a series that Kathryn has made to help explain North Carolina employment law. For more videos, click here. You can read the transcription of the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNESMmSK7u8
Transcription: When Does My Situation at Work Go From Bad to Illegal?
Well, first of all, it’s clear you don’t have a harassment claim.
Why?
Because to have a harassment claim, the conduct has to be both objectively and subjectively offensive.
So, if you’re not subjectively offended enough to say it’s impacting you in the workplace, you’re not going to win harassment like right there.
I guess the question becomes, how bad does it have to get before I have a cause of action?
I would say in general, if you’re being subjected to something that decreases your pay or downgrades your promotion trajectory those are times to check in with a lawyer. Obviously to get terminated that’s an obvious time to check in with a lawyer.
But if you’re experiencing a reorganization of your position in which all of your direct reports are taken away, and you’ve been a manager for a lot of years. That could be an adverse employment action.
So don’t necessarily count out things that happen that are short of termination if they’re impacting your pay or they are impacting your promotion trajectory in an adverse way, they might still be adverse employment actions.
