Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently decertified a class of female correctional facility employees who alleged gender discrimination based, in part, on a theory of “ambient” harassment.  The opinion underscores how the individualized nature of harassment claims can act as a barrier to class certification.

Nature of Claims

Female employees of the Cook County Jail Complex sued their employer for gender discrimination based on the County’s alleged failure to prevent and remedy male prison inmates’ sexual harassment of the plaintiffs.  Plaintiffs claimed that Cook County permitted this harassment to go unchecked and failed to maintain effective procedures to prevent and remedy the harassment.

In a pending NLRB case, an employees’ rights advocacy group, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (“NRTW”), filed an amicus brief supporting poultry plant workers seeking to decertify their union,  the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (“UFCW”), even though there was a collective bargaining agreement in place between the UFCW and their employer. The facts of the case are complex. But, the issue presented in the amicus brief and reply from the union is simple: should the NLRB abolish the decades-old contract bar rule that prohibits an election to oust a union with a collective bargaining agreement in effect?