A summary of the new employment rights

Firestone Discussion
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This post is intended as a summary of the recently passed Fair Employment Act and is in no way intended as legal advice.

FAIR EMPLOYMENT ACT PLAIN ENGLISH

SECTION 1: The rights of this bill apply to all employees of government departments (FSP, DOT, SCFD, etc.), except for trainees and cadets and the like.

a. Department command has to do their best to make sure your rights are respected.

b. Employees of Commerce businesses have different rights, which are explained in section 3

SECTION 2: No departments or Commerce businesses can treat their employees, including trainees, differently based on things they can’t control like race or political affiliation. The exception is if it’s against Terms of Service or stops you from doing your job, like ROBLOX’s safechat.

a. If your department uses contracts, they can’t force you to sign these protections away. If they did this in an earlier contract, that part of the contract is no longer binding.

SECTION 3: For Commerce businesses, the Secretary of Commerce will come up with their own regulations that applies to all businesses equally. These regulations will be fair to everyone.

a. In their regulations, there must be a way to appeal if a business takes action against an employee.

b. If a business violates these regulations, it doesn’t go to civil court—the Secretary handles it.

c. However, if a business discriminates against you in a way that goes against Section 2, you can take them to civil court.

SECTION 4: Just like Commerce, every department head has to come up with their own set of standard rules with punishments that apply equally and fairly to everyone. This also must include a way to appeal if you have been punished. These guides must be approved by the Governor or the County Executive (SCSO & SCFD). When they are approved, the guide must be easily accessible to everyone in the department. If any changes are made, the department head must announce the changes to all employees.

a. Department heads and people they authorize to punish people are allowed to discipline employees who break the rules, but they have to follow the standard punishment system.

b. Before you are punished, they must be sure that it’s more likely than not that you are the one that did it, not someone else. Note that they do not have to meet the court’s definition of POID.

c. If your boss decides to investigate you, they have to tell you you’re being investigated. However, if it risks state security to tell you, they can wait until after it’s done to tell you.

d. Before you’re punished, they have to tell you what you are accused of. You will then have the chance to defend yourself, unless you are a safety risk.

e. By staying and working in a department, you are agreeing to listen to their rules.

f. If you think you’ve been punished unfairly (action was not against the rule book, or the punishment was biased), you must appeal through your employer’s system first. If you don’t like the results of your appeal, you can take it to civil court.

g. If you take your department to court and win, your employer has to try their best to fix the damage they did to you, whether it’s simply removing a strike or admitting they were wrong.

SECTION 5: You’re allowed to talk or not talk about your department, the executive branch, the Governor, and any other things, whether in public or in private, whether what you’re saying is good or bad without getting punished for it. The exception is if you’re being purposefully mean or inflammatory or if your words or actions violates the law or Terms of Service.

SECTION 6: The Governor, County Executive, and the Secretary of Commerce are responsible for making sure this act is followed. The Courts will decide if it’s been broken during a case.

SECTION 7: An Act to Reform the General Employment Rights is no longer in effect.

SECTION 8: If the courts rule any part of this law to be unconstitutional, or another law nullifies part of it, the rest of the law still stays in effect.

SECTION 9: To make sure everyone has enough time, this law will go into effect 14 days after being signed by the Governor.

Chief Sponsor:
Representative SurrealReality

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Laissez faire

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downvote

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sidevote

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middle vote

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Section 1B fails to specify whether the subsections underneath each section are included

Even if the above were true, Section 2A doesnt apply for Commerce (intentional or not?)

Section 4, do amendments require Executive consent? And why is the Governor tasked with approving every policy?

4C Vague exception and fails to resolve the actual issue in the prior employment rights law regarding cumbersome investigation notices and fails to define investigations

4D Disciplinary measures include hirings and promotions for whatever reason and disciplinary measures do not include a ‘negative’ affection of rapport. Anything which affects an employee’s rapport, positively or negatively, could be construed to be a disciplinary measure under the definition in 4A. Therefore an opportunity to provide a defense is required for every such action. An expansion on what an employee’s rapport includes is not provided in this ‘new’ legislation and administrative leaves are also not alluded towards.

4F There is a difference between biases and nonconformance to disciplinary measures being taken. Or disciplinary system…? Whatever, There’s a plentitude of terms in this act which are both vague and not defined. And who is the liable party in a subsequent civil suit?

4G A civil appeal… or a civil case? And

Section 5, ‘Mean-spirited’, ok.

Section 6, no resolution regarding DPS disciplinary action

The old bill was at least clear that violations thereof were subject to civil suit, while this new Act only alludes to such and does not specify any further.

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GRP says any violation of state law = civil suit

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I’m pretty sure the GRP says that a civil case is any case without jail time. I think you mean that a complaint can only be valid when a violation of law is present, but nowhere is it specified whether it’s a civil or criminal matter where a violation of law must be present.

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Establishing efficient statutory employment rights shouldn’t be this hard, this new law seems to be more “pro-defendant” if anything (likely due to the backlash on how “pro-plaintiff” the previous employment rights were). Not only that, but some clauses of this new law are questionable; namely §§ 3B, 4B.

§ 3B is something that should be expanded upon; with the inclusion of the ability to sue the department of commerce if the department took unlawful actions during the process of punishment.

§ 4B, I find that it will bring a lot of departments to a state of dubiety because of the vagueness of “preponderance of evidence”. This standard only works if there are two-parties; whereas the party with the heavier (or more convincing in other words) evidence holds the preponderance. Instead of using this term, there should be a set of standards set for evidence intended to be used for disciplinary action. For example, set a standard on how old the evidence can be, how much does the evidence must show of the incident, does the evidence clearly identify the employee-in-question? You do not need to set court standards for these type of actions, just make sure there are a clear set of rules for disciplinary evidence.

I don’t necessarily disagree with employers establishing their own subsidiaries for purposes of handling appeals for disciplinary actions (similar to internal affairs which Fedora despises), but there should be more rules to increase the impartiality of such processes. Our previous employment rights built the stigma that you can sue a department with 0 standing for the suit which is obviously something I disagree with, there should also be some sort of standing concerning the law (not policy) for any suit which I do compliment this law for doing. The fine line is that, if you had disciplinary action taken against you but the law or your rights were violated in the process, you should sue. If that is not the case, you do not have any sort of entitlement to pursue a frivolous case.

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When one’s right against discrimination is violated this Act does not specify whether or not you can or cannot sue. So they shouldn’t be able to?

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I’m not referring to the act, I have simply reiterated my insight on when the ability to sue should be feasible and when it should not.

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You were talking about the act

Should standing exist when no disciplinary action is taken but employment rights are nonetheless violated?

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No man, I literally typed that out, you cannot tell me what is and is not about the act.

Anything arising from the constitution, bill of rights, or law gives one standing to sue. So, if statutory employment rights are violated, then yes there is standing to sue.

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you sure speak like a politician

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t and you can still pursue civil action if you ‘disagree’ with the appeal decision, which means you can always pursue civil action.

And in fact, this act (as I mentioned) is even less clear as it doesn’t include any reference to invalidating a disciplinary action in case your rights were violated in the process. Due to the ambiguity, one could argue that the rights are practically null and that challenging (or appealing?) a disciplinary action is now only possible when it was not adherent to the ‘standard disciplinary system’ (whatever that means) or when it was not in violation of policy. Odd.

The argument that anything in contravention of State law is a civil tort is not really backed up by too much, considering that courts historically decided that such is not true

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No, I’m not saying this law establishes what standing should be. I’m saying that this new appeals system essentially makes employers review their own policies and directives to decide if the action taken was fair or not. The previous employment rights (with the right-to-challenge) basically allowed employees to sue with zero concern regarding state law, the courts had to review and apply policy instead. At least with this new system, the courts finally don’t have to deal with the endless review of vague policies and can handle real issues concerning one’s rights or violations pertaining to matters of law. This is what I’m trying to convey.

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So my question is if DPS handles a situation if the plaintiff sues the department or DPS? The department can’t do much if DPS takes over but it is unclear on how that would be done.

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this is a piss poor bill not gonna lie. it should be re-written completely and correctly clarify things, so many issues.

nonetheless what about unions.

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Thats what I mean yes… I had to type that on moblie and thought you would understand what I was getting at but yes… by process of elimination it would be civil since it does not result in jail time…

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The Justice Department Recognition Act allows citizens only to file for a “a legal proceedings alleging a violation of civil statute by the defendant.” This Act does not make it clear whether there is or it is a civil ‘statute’.

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It’s a statute, it is not? I’m perplexed.

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