I rarely ever write about my life as a paralegal here because this is my personal space and I tend to keep my personal and professional lives separate. I knew when I started this blog that if I wrote about my paralegal jobs or cases I've worked on it would be the end of my legal career and I didn't want that. My legal career pays the bills. My writing gigs are mostly just for fun.
Plus, attorney/client privilege is a real thing. Clients should not have to worry about someone in their lawyer's office writing about them publicly, so I don't.
So this blog isn't about cases I've worked on, or attorneys I've worked for, or clients of the law firms where I've worked.
It's about fairness.
I started a new job last week working for a wonderful plaintiff's employment law firm here in Atlanta, Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. As I've been reading through cases and researching issues I've been reminded so many times of why employment law is my favorite area of law, and why I like it so much.
It started with my mother.
I was blessed to have a mother who was an incredible storyteller and my best friend.
Mom was born in 1933. She was a young woman in the 1950's when women were told basically that they could have a career OR a husband and children but not both. My mother was brilliant and she should not have had to make that choice. She was told so many things in her life that were blatantly unfair, and when she told me about them years later I was angry and indignant, on her behalf.
Mom started working as a sales clerk at the old Sears store in Ponce de Leon when she was 16 years old. She had to wear high heels all day and she was on her feet for her entire shift, not allowed to sit down. Years later she had a lot of circulation problems in her legs and we figured it started then. After working there for years and with a spotless performance record, she knew the store intimately. She applied for the management training program when she was almost finished with college and was told "You won't ever be admitted because you're a woman. We only train men to be managers because they have to support a family."
She thought she might like to go to law school. She made excellent grades in college and excelled at public speaking. Her uncle, a lawyer in Macon, said "There's no reason for you to go to law school. You'll just get married and quit."
Another dream was to be a professional singer and she had a wonderful voice. She sang professionally, all over Atlanta, and for the USO. When she married my dad in 1957 that ended. He didn't want her to even sing at church, because rehearsals took her away from him and later her children. Like most men of that time, Dad expected his house clean, his children behaved, and dinner on the table every night. [To be fair, though, he was a very hands-on father and they were a real team when it came to parenting.]
When she and Dad had been married a few years, she was teaching school and when she got pregnant with my brother the school forced her to quit. No visibly pregnant woman was allowed to teach in South Carolina in 1959. She was so upset she told me she cried for a week because it was the middle of the school year and she missed the children so much.
So hearing about all those experiences made me aware of the fact that women of my mother's generation often didn't get treated fairly in the workplace, or in society in general.Fortunately, things have gotten better in recent years.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first major piece of legislation to try and make the workplace more fair for everyone. If you really want to understand it, you can go here, to the EEOC website, but the part that most interests me is this:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Mom contributed a lot to my awareness of the injustices women faced in her day -- and still face now, in some instances -- but my father also helped me to understand that employment fairness is critical. He ran the trust department of a large bank for 35 year. He championed a young black man to be the manager of one of the bank's branches in the mid 1970's when appointing a person of color to a managerial job was unheard of. Dad knew he would do a great job and he went to bat for him. Dad also hired a young woman to work in his department who was black, and until then I don't think there had ever been any non-white people in the trust department. Dad didn't judge people based on race.
When it came to race, my family was unusual. I actually wrote about that here. Unlike many southern families, you never heard the N word in my house when I was growing up. My parents made it clear we were never to use that word or we would be spanked, and I have never used it. Just in my lifetime, so many things have changed. Unlike so many people in past generations, I adopted mixed-race children. I have dear friends who are black. My children have both dated African Americans, with my blessing. My gay friends and family members can now live openly and marry their partners. Most churches in Atlanta welcome people from the LGBTQ community. The South today is not the South of generations past, thanks be to God.
Women still face employment discrimination, though, and non-white people still face employment discrimination. A recent poll found that 91% of those surveyed had faced workplace discrimination. People over 40 often face age discrimination; I have dealt with that. My son has lost out on jobs because he is an amputee. Workplace retaliation happens every day -- for example an employee files an EEOC complaint and then is quickly terminated for no good reason. Whistleblowers often lose their jobs. People who are overweight or not white still don't get hired.Women who have children don't get the same opportunities for advancement. And so on.
I hope and pray one day we will have a better world, but until that happens I feel like I fight on the side of the angels.This new job is more than just a job. What I do matters. I work for brilliant, kind, wonderful attorneys who genuinely want to help their clients. I love that.
If you've experienced discrimination -- because you're a woman, a person of color, over 40, disabled, gay or trans, or for any reason -- call an attorney in your city. You might have a case. You will never know until you explore your options.If you are in Atlanta, call Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. You will get a fair assessment of your case. You might even get to know me as a paralegal.
#atlantaemploymentattorneys, #atlantadiscriminationcases, #understandingyourrights, #ineedtofileaneeoccomplaint, #suinganemployer
