When you look at the number of charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2008 compared to 2007, you will notice that the number of charges were at an all time high of 95,402 in 2008 compared to 82,792 in 2007 (http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html). This is a huge jump of over 15% and it seems that the only people in the United States who care about it are the employment attorneys who want to scare the crap out of business owners so they can sell their services. I have seen lawyers kind of push the panic button before - most recently with the Lilly Ledbetter Act as most HR professionals polled, me included, feel that the Lilly Ledbetter Act will be a big nothing.

The EEOC statistics are different, though and the big jump is scaring me and I don't scare easily.

The number of charges in 2008 should make business owners do the JoBeth Williams thing from Poltergeist by screaming "WHAT'S HAPPENING??" at the top of your lungs.

Oh, we can justify the high increase by stating that it is due to the economy and the laid off people are just looking for some easy bucks. If you are in this justification mode, then how do you explain a mere 5% increase in 2002 when the country had the last huge downturn in jobs.

Here's another reason to scream - the largest weeks of payoffs in the last year occurred during the first 4 months of 2009. Job losses during these months were much higher than they were in the last three months of 2008. So it follows that the trend will continue through the rest of the year. You can justify things any way you want. The truth is businesses are seeing a retaliation pandemic from exiting employees.

Here are a few ways that you ensure that you will be victimized by the victims:

1. Treat employees badly and when you let them go, do not give them any advanced notice and do not give them any wages in lieu of notice.

2. Fight their unemployment benefits.

3. Have someone else deliver the layoff message to them and do it in a cold and uncaring manner.

4. Don't give them any information on how to apply for unemployment or where to go to get some help with resume preparation and job searching tips.

5. Keep putting your head in the sand and pretend that there are no problems.

6. Continually remind your employees that they ought to be lucky to have a job.

OK this is a very sarcastic entry, but I am tired if hearing the horror stories of how employees are treated when being laid off.

The personal injury attorneys are circling like vultures and their waiting for you to make a mistake.

Don't be a victim of the victims.