Talking in the workplace while Trump can get the layoff of American workers and fines for employers

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has won at least a dozen lawsuits over the past decade against employees who told their colleagues to go home.

While President Donald Trump's remark that four women of colour in Congress were to "return" to their ancestral countries was condemned as racist and erroneous, similar comments by others had far more serious consequences.

The language used by Trump is contrary to the law of the workplace. Supervisors or co-workers who target their verbally abused co-workers and organizations that allow them to do so can end up in court and face heavy fines.

The Commission for equal opportunities in employment (EEOC) quotes similar terms to Trump in an already published document explaining workplace harassment based on national origin:

"Ethnic insults and other verbal or physical behaviour on the basis of nationality are illegal if they are serious or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment, impair work performance or employment prospects. Examples of potentially illegal behaviour include insults, taunts, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments such as "go back where you came from," whether made by supervisors or colleagues. "

When Trump tweeted that Democratic Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts should "help repair the totally devastated and criminal places from which they originate," he used the kind of racially offensive language that led to heavy fines, as evidenced by employment discrimination cases in EEOC.

Women in Congress can't complain to the EEOC because Trump is not their boss. He had no authority over the Legislature and the women of Congress, although he set the tone for the government and appointed the president of the EEOC.

Private sector employees have been successful in taking action against those who make or tolerate similar comments. A federal insider review of the EEOC documents shows that the agency has been successful on behalf of employees in at least a dozen cases over the past decade, in part because a supervisor or colleague has said "go back" to an employee in a sectarian context.

According to EEOC documents, the regulations most severely hit by employers include::

- A 2010 agreement with Elmer W. Davis Inc., a roofing contractor in Rochester, New York, to pay $ 1 million to African-American employees, " because they were constantly subjected to racial insults from their white foremen, "including" All n - - - we should get on a boat and go back to Africa. ' "

- An agreement reached in 2012 with the Delano Regional Medical Center in Delano, California, for the payment of us $ 975,000, as the employees of the Philippine American Hospital were subjected to a "hostile work environment", including "humiliating threats of arrest if they did not speak English and were asked to return to the Philippines.""

- A 2009 agreement with Wheeler Construction Inc., in Phoenix, Arizona, to pay $ 325,000 for verbal harassment of two employees, which included an order to return to Mexico. One of the female employees was born in the United States (as were three of the four women in Congress targeted by Trump).

- An agreement reached in 2011 with New York University, described by the EEOC as "the largest private university in the United States and one of the ten largest employers in the city of New York", providing for the payment of $ 210,000, as a supervisor of the mail room of the Ghana Library, with insults such as "Monkey" and "gorilla" and insults such as "go back to your cage". "

- A 2011 agreement with Simon Property Group, a national real estate company that owned a Caesars Palace mall in Las Vegas, to pay US $ 125,000 because a white housekeeping shift supervisor called racial insults among Latino employees, including "tacos", "burritos", and repeatedly told them to "go back to Mexico". "

- An agreement reached in 2010 with the Sahara Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas to pay US $ 100,000 because " the supervisors and colleagues of the Sahara have continually belittled and harassed Ezzat Elias... Because of his Egyptian heritage. like ' Go Back to Egypt.' "

The Act applies to all employees in the private and public sectors, but supervisors should be held to higher standards. James Eisenmann, former executive director of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial body that protects against prohibited practices of staff in the workplace federal, stated that a supervisor using the language that Trump could face sanctions ranging from a verbal warning to dismissal.

"Of course, the level of discipline will depend on the severity and frequency of this behaviour and whether supervisors have ever behaved in the same way," he said. "An agency could be held liable if it failed to sanction the supervisor and subsequently engaged in similar misconduct."

The White House did not respond to requests for comments. The three EEOC commissioners were not available to answer questions, according to an agency spokesperson, even by e-mail. This includes the Chair, Janet Dhillon, a person appointed by Trump who was asked to comment on July 24.


Regional lawyer Rudy Sustaita of the Houston district office began a lawsuit against Marion's Cleaners in Metairie, Louisiana, last year in connection with a "return to Mexico"case. to be born in a particular country or race ".