are you able to fireplace somebody for being racist?
A reader writes:
Lately, my firm employed somebody who was extraordinarily racist. He labored with me on his first day, the place he dropped an terrible racial slur six occasions. I used to be shocked so did just a little social media sleuthing and located his horrifying Twitter web page stuffed with xenophobic and racist tweets and posts. We fired him.
Nevertheless, after talking to a buddy who’s in HR, she mentioned we couldn’t merely fireplace him for being racist. Now, clearly our lawyer and HR rep disagreed with that as a result of he was fired. However what say you? Are racist posts and hate speech sufficient to fireplace somebody? She appears to suppose we should always have put him on an enchancment plan first. I believe at that time it’s too late and having a racist worker places our workers of coloration in danger unnecessarily. I’m happy with the best way the corporate dealt with it, however she thinks we opened ourselves as much as authorized legal responsibility. She mentioned his racism was aside of his “political opinion” and you’ll’t fireplace somebody over their political opinion. However “racist” is hardly a political opinion, it’s hate speech. So, I received’t ask if we had been “fallacious” to fireplace him, however might we’ve doubtlessly opened ourselves as much as authorized points by firing him primarily based solely on racist tweets and his racist feedback mentioned to me however directed at different folks?
I reply this query over at Inc. right this moment, the place I’m revisiting letters which have been buried within the archives right here from years in the past (and typically updating/increasing my solutions to them). You can learn it right here.