Legal Question in Employment Law in Alabama

Re: Rasies and evaluations

There is no requirement by an Alabama employer to give you raises, or to even treat you fairly, and they can indeed promote others over you who came in after you and give others raises and not give one to you. That is one of the problems in a so called "right to work" state where you have little rights to unionize.

However, there may be several other issues here that would depend a lot on the particular facts. First, is this a large company? Preferably over 100 employees. Suing small businesses in Alabama is unlikely to result in a recovery. If those hurdles are passed the next question becomes, are you a female or an African-American? While an employer may pay people differently and promote whoever he wants, they cannot discriminate against you on the basis of race or sex. That is absolutely verboten and those claims can be very good, but you need to have your ducks in a row before going after them, and preferably have some hard core evidence of race or sex discrimination such as a statement by a decisionmaker, or overwhelming circumstantial evidence such as all women or blacks get a lower wage and no promotions, etc. The fact that they fail to do evaluations though would strongly undercut any arguments that they could make if you are say the only female or black employee there. A lack of evaluation system really hurts a lot of companies when it comes to litigation.

In any event, if this is a race or sex case, then you need to get an attorney as soon as possible.

Feel free to call me at 205-458-1100 and I'd be happy to talk to you over the phone.

Sterling L. DeRamus

Attorney at Law

Birmingham, Alabama

[email protected]