What You Don’t Know about Workplace Rules Could Cost You Your Job

Cindy Krischer Goodman | Workplace Columnist, January 8, 2012, The Miami Herald
The holidays are over, your boss is still a jerk and now you’re deciding whether to set him straight about how to treat you in 2013.

What you do next could cost you your job, shut you out of your industry for awhile or help you win a case against your employer.

As we launch into a new year, it’s an ideal time to brush up on your workplace rights.

“What you think you know about your employment rights is probably dead wrong,” says Donna Ballman, a Fort Lauderdale employee-side labor attorney and author of Stand Up for Yourself Without Getting Fired: Resolve Workplace Crises Before You Quit, Get Axed or Sue the Bastards.

If you think your boss needs a reason to fire you, you’re wrong. In every state in the nation, with the exception of Montana, employers can fire employees for any reason or no reason at all. But you can learn strategy to help you come out ahead in career-threatening situations.

Let’s say you choose to tell your boss he’s a bully or publicly criticize his style of management. Know that not a single state has a law against workplace bullying and that your criticism could get you fired in most states.

“When you work for a private sector employer, you have no constitutional right of free speech,” says Mark Neuberger, a management-side employment attorney with Foley & Lardner in Miami. “Most workers think they do and think they can speak out, but they are wrong. They get fired and learn the hard way that they might have been better off addressing their issues differently.”