Green Savits Employment Law Blog

Since Hanukkah is coming to an end, Christmas is just about here, and Kwanza is just around the corner, I thought this would be the perfect time to tell you all a bit about your rights as religious observers in the workplace.

The most important thing to know is that under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, employers are required to prevent and/or cure harassment and are prohibited from discriminating against employees on the basis of their religion. This means that, in addition to other terms or conditions of your employment, getting a job, keeping a job, or getting a raise, a promotion, or benefits cannot be conditioned...

Every employee sees and hears things around the workplace. It’s hard not to. Sometimes employees see, hear, or are asked to be involved in something they don’t feel comfortable doing because they believe it is wrong or illegal. Understandably, many of these employees are afraid of the potential repercussions of reporting or protesting what they’ve seen, heard, or been asked to do. But before you decide to follow the three monkeys and “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” it is important to know how and when you are protected for speaking out against wrongful conduct in the workplace.

Under New Jersey law, someone who reports...

Many potential clients come into our office to pursue their claims of discrimination with stacks of documents to show us that they think support their claims. Some of the documents are merely their own performance evaluations or company policies that they were given to them at the start of their employment. However, sometimes clients bring us copies of emails, company financial information, or other employees’ performance evaluations that they helped themselves too when they still had access to their employers’ documents. This always begs the question, “was their self-help legal?”

Self-help copying of documents is always a risk....

            “You can’t prove anything, detective.  All you have is circumstantial evidence!”  How often do we think of that movie cliché whenever we think about circumstantial evidence?  We think of it as inferior to eyewitness or other direct evidence.  The fact is that circumstantial evidence can be very powerful and is the primary way that discrimination cases are proven. 

            If, when you go to bed, there is no snow on the ground, but when you wake up there is a foot of snow outside, you can conclude that it snowed overnight.  That is circumstantial evidence.  Now suppose I told you I was up all night looking out the...