“Eman at Yazdchi Law was extremely professional, responsive, and supportive at all times. He and his staff exceeded all of my expectations.”
Andrea Dalessandro
✦ Board-Certified Specialist in Workers’ Compensation Law — State Bar of California ✦
Your employer cannot punish you for getting hurt. If they did, we’ll make them pay.
By Eman Yazdchi, Esq. · Certified Specialist in Workers' Compensation Law
Retaliation against workers who file workers' comp claims is illegal in California. It is also common in Sylmar's industrial corridor. Along San Fernando Road, in the manufacturing plants, food processing facilities, and warehouses that power this neighborhood's economy, workers who report injuries face termination, hour reductions, schedule changes, and threats designed to discourage them from exercising their legal rights. Under Labor Code Section 132a, every form of retaliation against a worker for filing or intending to file a workers' comp claim is prohibited and carries substantial penalties. If your employer in Sylmar retaliated against you for seeking workers' comp benefits, you have a separate legal claim on top of your injury case.
Retaliation in Sylmar's industrial sector takes many forms. The most blatant is termination. A worker at a manufacturing plant on San Fernando Road reports a machine injury, files a DWC-1 claim form, and is fired within days, often under a pretext such as "poor performance" or "restructuring." The timing reveals the true motive.
More subtle forms of retaliation are equally common and equally illegal. A food processing worker who files a claim for carpal tunnel returns to find their hours slashed from 40 per week to 15. A warehouse worker who reports a back injury is transferred from a day shift to a graveyard shift, or reassigned to harder physical labor as punishment. A manufacturing worker's scheduled overtime is eliminated after filing a claim. A supervisor begins documenting minor infractions that were never an issue before the injury, building a paper trail to justify a future termination.
In Sylmar's industrial workplaces, retaliation also takes the form of threats and intimidation. Supervisors tell workers that filing a claim will "make problems" for them. Employers suggest that the worker should handle the injury on their own rather than involve the insurance company. In workplaces with largely undocumented workers, some employers use the most coercive threat available: they suggest, explicitly or implicitly, that filing a workers' comp claim will lead to questions about the worker's immigration status or even deportation. This threat has no legal basis, it is itself a form of retaliation, and it exploits the vulnerability of workers who may not know the law protects them.
Labor Code Section 132a makes it a misdemeanor for any employer to discharge or threaten to discharge, or to discriminate in any manner against, an employee because the employee filed or intended to file a workers' comp claim, or because the employee received a workers' comp award. The statute is broad. It covers not just termination but any adverse action taken because of the workers' comp claim.
The remedies under Section 132a are substantial. If you prove retaliation, you are entitled to reinstatement to your former position, back pay and lost benefits from the date of the retaliatory action, a penalty of up to $10,000 in increased compensation paid by the employer, and costs and expenses including attorney fees. These remedies are awarded by the workers' comp judge at the Van Nuys WCAB as part of your workers' comp case. You do not need to file a separate lawsuit.
The legal standard for proving retaliation requires showing that you engaged in protected activity, that your employer took an adverse action against you, and that there is a causal connection between the protected activity and the adverse action. Close timing between the filing of a claim and the termination or other adverse action is strong evidence of retaliation. A pattern of pretextual write-ups or performance complaints that began only after the claim was filed also supports the case.
It is important to understand that an employer is not required to hold your job open indefinitely while you recover from an injury. But an employer cannot fire you because you filed a claim, and if your position is genuinely eliminated, the burden shifts to the employer to prove the termination was unrelated to the workers' comp claim. In practice, employers who retaliate rarely have clean documentation to support a legitimate business reason, because the real reason was the claim.
Sylmar's industrial workforce is disproportionately vulnerable to retaliation for reasons that go beyond the general employer-employee power imbalance. Many workers along San Fernando Road are employed in physically demanding jobs that are difficult to replace. Manufacturing, food processing, and warehouse positions in Sylmar pay working-class wages that support families. Losing that income is devastating.
The large Latino workforce in Sylmar includes many workers who may be undocumented. These workers are especially vulnerable to retaliatory threats because some employers weaponize the worker's immigration status to suppress claims. This is categorically illegal. Under Labor Code Section 3351, all workers in California are covered by workers' compensation regardless of immigration status. An employer cannot ask about immigration status during the workers' comp process. An employer cannot report a worker to immigration authorities as retaliation for filing a claim. Any threat to do so is itself an act of retaliation that violates Section 132a and potentially other state and federal laws.
Workers who do not know these protections exist are the ones most likely to suffer in silence. They endure the injury without medical treatment, lose wages they are entitled to recover, and accept whatever the employer dictates because they believe they have no other choice. A workers' comp retaliation lawyer changes that dynamic entirely. Filing a 132a petition puts the employer on notice that the retaliation has legal consequences and shifts the conversation from employer intimidation to the worker's legal rights.
If you believe your employer is retaliating against you for filing a workers' comp claim, documentation is critical. Save copies of any schedule changes, hour reductions, or reassignment notices. Keep records of any text messages, emails, or verbal statements from supervisors that reference your claim or injury. Note the dates and specifics of any disciplinary actions that began after you filed the claim. If coworkers witnessed retaliatory statements or actions, their testimony may support your case.
Do not quit your job in response to retaliation unless the working conditions have become genuinely intolerable. Quitting can complicate your retaliation claim by allowing the employer to argue that you voluntarily left. If the conditions are dangerous or truly unbearable, consult a lawyer before making that decision. In some cases, a constructive termination, where the employer makes conditions so bad that any reasonable employee would quit, is treated the same as an actual termination for retaliation purposes.
Injured at work in Sylmar? Call (661) 273-1780
Tap to call →Retaliation claims under Section 132a are litigated within the workers' comp system, not in civil court. This means the same judge who handles your injury case also handles the retaliation petition. Eman Yazdchi is a Board-Certified Workers' Compensation Specialist, a credential held by fewer than 1% of California attorneys. That specialization encompasses the full range of workers' comp litigation, including 132a retaliation claims. For Sylmar workers who were fired, threatened, or punished for exercising their legal right to file a claim, a Board-Certified specialist builds the evidentiary case needed to prove retaliation and secure the full range of penalties the law provides.
Yazdchi Law's Palmdale office is directly up the 14 Freeway from Sylmar. The firm handles retaliation cases at the Van Nuys WCAB, which is just minutes away, and provides free consultations to evaluate whether you have a viable retaliation claim.
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