If you’re considering bringing an employment discrimination claim against your employer, you may have a number of goals in mind. First, you likely want the discrimination against you to stop, if it hasn’t already, and for your company to make you whole. Many victims of employment discrimination also want to ensure that their co-workers don’t have to go through the same or similar treatment in the future. An award of damages to an individual employee can only partially address these goals. So, how can an employee ensure that their employer not only pays for past discrimination against them but also makes changes to their policies and practices so that other employees don’t suffer from the discrimination in the future?

This type of employment policy change can be part of the overall remedy an employee seeks in their complaint and can occur at almost any stage of the complaint. Eisenberg & Baum has decades of experience helping victims of workplace discrimination recover the damages they’re due as well as make lasting changes at their workplace. We’ll talk in this post about when and how your employer can be persuaded and eventually ordered to make changes to their policies and practices.

Employer’s Internal Complaint Process

Change can come from within your company without ever having to go to court. The first step for any employee who is suffering discrimination at work is to let their employer know. Change typically will not come on its own. It often takes a victim standing up to their co-worker, manager or other harasser to get the process started. Many employers have adopted internal policies and procedures for handling discrimination complaints. Following this process puts your employer on notice that you have a complaint and they will need to investigate. When an employer’s internal complaint procedure is working well, it produces effective, independent investigations that can resolve the employee’s complaint through not only a remedy for the victim and discipline for the accused, but also internal changes to the extent that the employer’s policies or procedures played a part in creating the environment in which the discrimination occurred.

Administrative and Court Orders

Unfortunately, not all internal employer investigations resolve an employee’s complaint. The investigation may have resulted in a finding that no discrimination occurred or in a remedy that did not fully satisfy the employee. At that point, the employee will want to take their case to a third party, either an administrative agency that enforces discrimination laws or a court. In either case, the employee will be able to continue to seek policy changes among their remedies.

Administrative Complaints

One of the options you have as a victim of workplace discrimination is filing an administrative claim either with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the EEOC) or, where applicable, with a state or local agency like the New York State Division of Human Rights or the New York City Commission on Human Rights. These agencies have the responsibility of enforcing various federal, state and local employment discrimination laws, and in the case of the New York State and City agencies, have the ability to order the employer to stop the discrimination and make necessary internal changes to ensure similar discrimination does not occur in the future.

While the EEOC itself can’t issue a binding order for damages or other remedies, it will often encourage the parties to settle the claim informally before bringing litigation. In a recent case handled by the EEOC and the New York Attorney General, female field workers for utility provider Con Edison brought sexual harassment and gender discrimination complaints against their employer for widespread harassment and discrimination by their male counterparts and supervisors. As part of their complaint, the employees alleged that Con Edison failed to effectively respond when the female employees complained internally and didn’t follow its own policies for discrimination investigations and retaliation. In September 2015, the EEOC and New York Attorney General announced a settlement had been reached with Con Ed in which the employer agreed to pay its female field workers $3.8 million in damages. The settlement went further, though, requiring Con Ed to provide training to its supervisors and make changes to its policies and procedures dealing with discrimination complaints.

Lawsuits

As a discrimination victim, you also have the option of taking your employer to court to address their discriminatory actions and recover damages. As part of the remedy in discrimination cases, courts generally have the ability to order injunctive relief to prevent the discrimination from occurring again. For example, a court could order an end to an employer’s use of certain age or gender requirements that contributed to the discrimination claim in the first place. A court could also require an employer to create or implement a new policy or procedure, such as providing sexual harassment training to all supervisors. In 2012, for example, after a jury found manufacturing company AA Foundaries, Inc. violated federal law by subjecting African-American employees to a racially hostile work environment, the court issued an order that both permanently prohibited AA Foundaries from engaging in further racial discrimination and required the company to develop policies and procedures for handling racial discrimination complaints in the future.

Even short of a judgment like that issued in the AA Foundaries case, your lawsuit can have an affect on your employer’s policies. A policy change could be included in the terms of a settlement with your employer, as was the case in a large racial discrimination lawsuit settlement involving Coca-Cola in 2000. As part of that settlement, Coca-Cola agreed to let an outside panel revise its personnel policy to improve the company’s record of hiring and paying minorities and women. In other cases, employers have taken it on themselves to make policy changes separate from any settlement or court order.

You Can Make a Change

If you’ve been discriminated against at work, you can make a difference for yourself and other employees by stepping forward with your complaint. Change can happen at any time, but it often takes someone to raise the issue before it can be addressed. If you’d like to discuss your discrimination claim and the types of remedies you can pursue, please contact Eisenberg & Baum. We offer free initial consultations for employment discrimination claims and bill on a contingent fee basis, so you won’t have to pay us unless we win your case.