CARTOONS & REASSIGNMENTS

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee, the only African-American in her office, found that a co-worker had come into her office and drawn a monkey face on her whiteboard. When she asked management to do something about the harassment, it did.  It transferred her to another location that wound up costing her relocation costs.  She also lost her private office in the move. When she filed an EEO complaint, EEOC stepped in to order her reassigned back to her old office and the person who drew the cartoon moved elsewhere.

It has said repeatedly that in “…harassment cases, we have generally found that an agency may not involuntarily transfer or reassign the victim of the harassment, and the agency should instead transfer or reassign the harasser.”

ICE defended itself saying the employee had agreed to the reassignment, but the employee demonstrated she only agreed to a temporary move to allow the Agency to find out who the perpetrator was.

For more details, check out Melanie F., v. Alejandro N. Mayorkas, DHS/ICE, EEOC No. 2021002205 (2022

About AdminUN

FEDSMILL staff has over 40 years of federal sector labor relations experience on the union as well as management side of the table and even some time as a neutral.
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