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Happy Days Children’s Wear


Happy Days Children's Wear

Chapter 7: Lessons Learned from Companies Caught in the Act

Posted by Dawn Lomer on July 25th, 2011

Chapter 1: Xerox and Ford

Chapter 2: Siemens and Satyam

Chapter 3: Tyco and Hewlett-Packard

Chapter 4: Johnson & Johnson and Mattel

Chapter 5: BAE and Google

Chapter 6: International Monetary Fund and Verizon

Chapter 7: Happy Days Children’s Wear

Happy Days Children’s Wear Inc.

Fine/Settlement: $22,500

Happy Days Children’s Wear Inc. is a small children’s shop inNew York. Its manager dismissed a female employee of seven years because she was pregnant. Although the manager gave other reasons for the dismissal, the EEOC felt that the reasons weren’t consistent or plausible.

While the dollar value of the settlement with the EEOC might seem small, it was significant for the size of the business.

Lessons Learned

  • Anti-discrimination training
    • Pregnant women are a protected class, making it illegal to discriminate against an expecting employee.
  • HR policies and training
    • When terminating an employee, provide him or her with concrete examples of the actions that led to the decision. To do this, employers and supervisors must keep an updated written record of employee incidents or misconduct. This serves as evidence, if a lawsuit is filed, that the employee was terminated for just cause.
    • It is also important to perform and document regular employee evaluations so that any feedback that employees have been given are recorded. This could provide a defense in the case of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.

Dawn Lomer
Dawn Lomer

Manager of Communications

Dawn Lomer is the Manager of Communications at i-Sight (now Case IQ) Software and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). She writes about topics related to workplace investigations, ethics and compliance, data security and e-discovery, and hosts i-Sight (now Case IQ) webinars.