Hi, I’m Alex Granovsky and I’m the Managing Member of Granovsky & Sundaresh. We are an employment law firm based in New York City.
In today’s video, I’m going to go over a concept in employment law that there’s a ton of misconceptions about – hostile work environment. The biggest misconception of the hostile work environment is it’s not enough for your employer to merely be a jerk. There are three big elements to hostile work environment claims.
Element one: unwelcome conduct. Your employer has to be doing something unwelcome. There’s got to be some hostility there, but the hostility has to be based on your protected class. It’s not enough that your boss is a jerk; your boss has to be a jerk because of your age race, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, etc. If your boss is what I call an equal opportunity day hole, that sucks. That makes your job terrible and your life terrible. It’s not illegal. It’s not a hostile work environment claims. Unwelcome conduct has to be based on your protected class.
Number two: It’s got to be bad. The standard is the conduct must be severe and pervasive by a reasonable person’s standard. So it’s got to be really bad to hit that mark. And look, there are definitely shades of gray. But one offhand remark, unless it’s horrific, isn’t going to cut it. It’s got to be severe and pervasive.
And finally, if the perpetrator isn’t your supervisor or somebody of authority within the company, you have to give your employer an opportunity to fix it. So you have to provide notice to your employer and then they have to fail to remedy the harassment or hostile work environment in the case of it being a subordinate or one of your peers as opposed to your boss or the greater employer.
So that’s hostile work environment under the New York City human rights law standard. But frankly, under both state and federal law, it’s pretty similar. Unwelcome conduct must be based on your protected class that is severe and pervasive based on a reasonable person’s standard and your employer has to know about it and not do anything.
Any questions? The number is in this video. Feel free to call or email us. Thanks for watching.