Employment

Yes. If you are a covered New Jersey employee who is terminated in a mass layoff according to the conditions set forth in the New Jersey WARN Act, you are entitled to severance pay. Generally, NJ employers are not required to give severance pay to terminated workers unless there is a contractual term between the employer and worker that stipulates the conditions and rate of pay. If there is a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that stipulates the conditions for severance, then severance must be paid according to the terms of the CBA.

However, in the case of a mass layoff in New Jersey, NJ workers are entitled to severance pursuant to the terms in the New Jersey WARN Act, N.

New Jersey laws mandates that an employer may not discriminate against an employee in the terms and conditions of employment because they perceive the employee to be disabled. The employee does not,  in fact,  have to actually be disabled. If the employer discriminates against an employee because he perceives him to to be disabled, it is a violation of the employee’s civil rights under the NJ Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). This may happen when the employee had a prior disability from which he is now fully recovered, such as from a sports injury, cancer, certain heart-related events. When an employee has a history of a disability, the employer may perceive them to be disabled long after they are no longer disabled.

A Performance Improvement Plan, PIP, standing alone with no other evidence and no other action, is not necessarily considered an actionable “adverse action” for a discrimination claim. However, when there is other evidence of discrimination, an undeserved PIP may be an illegal attempt to hide an illegal discriminatory motive in a termination. Employees who are given a Performance Improvement Plan, generally are given 30 or 60, or less frequently, 90 days to meet the goals of the PIP or face a possible termination. Unscrupulous employers who want to terminate a worker who is in a protected class, such as race, age, sex,  etc., for discriminatory reasons may give a PIP to the worker with vague goals, no clear language or bench marks, to have a bogus excuse to fire the worker, in a pre-emptive strike to build a legal defense in the event the employee subsequently files a discrimination lawsuit.

It is no surprise that older workers are frequently the first to be laid off by employers. Employers will frequently offer some money in a severance agreement in return for the terminated employee’s waiving their right to sue their employer. There are strictly regulated federal mandates for an employee’s waiver of claims of a right to sue to be held valid for those who are 40 years of age and over. If these factors as enumerated in the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, are not met, the waiver is not valid, and courts have held such waivers to be unenforceable. Age discrimination is on the rise.

Under The New Jersey Wage Payment Law, employers must pay wages to most employees in full at least twice monthly. If not paid, the employees can file a private lawsuit for the unpaid wages, plus up to 200% in liquidated damages totaling triple the amount of damages plus attorney fees.

Don’t sit on your rights. If your employer has not paid you owed wages for work or retaliated against you for complaining what you believe is your employer’s improper wage payment, you should contact this law firm today for a free consultation. I accept cases from all over NJ and have locations in Southern, Central and Northern NJ to meet with clients.

Employee supervisors may gaslight workers with disabilities or otherwise treat them in a dismissive manner, exclude them from meetings, etc. Co-workers may tell jokes regarding a disability or make fun of certain disabilities. This dismissive treatment may become severe or pervasive enough to make an employee believe that their working environment is hostile or abusive. They may wonder if they have an actionable claim of a hostile work environment under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. 

Don’t sit on your rights.

Chapter 105 of the Laws of 1986, the New Jersey Statute otherwise known as Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA), was enacted in the wake of the New Jersey Supreme Court opinion in Pierce v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., 84 N.J. 58, 417 (1980), to cement the State’s commitment to protect and encourage employees to report illegal or unethical workplace activities.

Obesity alone without other limitations currently is not automatically considered a civil right protected class of “disability” under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. However, if obesity has caused an employee to have other medical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, lack of physical coordination, the employee will be considered disabled.

American Medical Association (AMA) has designated obesity as a disease. Its rational was that obesity is a disease that leads to other limiting medical conditions that are recognized disabilities, such as cardiovascular disease. Although the New Jersey Courts, and the NJLAD have not included obesity when standing alone as a disability, NJ employees who are harassed, fired, demoted, or otherwise treated worse at their jobs because they are overweight may be protected when they have other limiting conditions.

Employees who are thinking of filing a lawsuit often wonder why so many cases never make it to the trial phase. Victims of employment discrimination face unique challenges and the vast majority of employment discrimination lawsuits never go to trial. They are either dismissed beforehand by the court or settled between the parties. Only a small percentage of New Jersey employment discrimination suits ever reach a jury verdict.  This is consistent with national employment litigation patterns, whether brought under state discrimination statutes or under federal law, Title VII.

Racial Equality in the US workplace as to racially unbiased promotions, equal pay for equal work, etc., is still too frequently nothing more than a cultural fiction. Racism in employment may go unrecognized when blatant racism has been exchanged for subtle, hidden biases. Employers, concerned about civil rights laws, proceed with caution fearing lawsuits, but this concern does not necessarily abate their applying different standards in evaluating an employee’s worth to the company and utilizing different criteria in Employee Performance Evaluations, when the employee is a person of color. This could be intentional if the person with the authority to promote is aware of their own racial bias but simply doesn’t care.

Sexual harassment at work is disempowering, humiliating and can leave emotional scars for years. If an employee thinks if they simply ignore it and do not respond or report it, that the sexual harassment will not happen again, they are likely mistaken. Individuals who have not personally experienced being sexual harassed at work, may have no real sense of how deeply debilitating and long lasting, acts of sexual harassment are. These acts, whether done by a supervisor or by a co-worker, may be carried out with a conscious or unconscious intent to repress or to sabotage the quality of the employee’s effectiveness at work. However, proving such intent, or even alleging it, is not necessary to prevail in a New Jersey sexual harassment claim.