S.F. Superior Court employees written up for dressing down

[Jesus Malverde]

l work environment, but employees at the Superior Court are getting dressed down - and written up - for not wearing the appropriate "professional" attire.

Hoodies, T-shirts and sneakers are out - coats and ties for the men are in, and for women, it's business suits.

"They're overstepping their bounds," Chris Daly, the former city supervisor who is now a union organizer, said of the court's crackdown on more than 400 employees who work in the Hall of Justice and the Civic Center courthouse.

"We had people wearing the same outfits they were wearing last year that were fine - only now, they're being written up," said Peter Masiak of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents many of the workers, most of them clerical employees.

Read More: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-Superior-Court-employees-written-up-for-5250590.php

[Trillo]

1. T-shirts and sneakers are some of the least expensive clothes you can own.

Coats and ties, beyond the much greater initial costs, also require dry cleaning. This reduces employees' disposable incomes.

[yeoman6987]

5. Teachers

Teachers hardly make any money and have these same rules.

[former9thward]

2. Court employees who interact with the public should wear professional attire.

Especially in court. It is serious business not a beach party.

[COLGATE4]

3. ^^^ THIS ^^^

[yeoman6987]

4. I agree

I can't even understand how people would not realize that. Appropriate clothes would be suits for men and business attire for woman. Not hard to figure out.

[Trillo]

6. "Serious business" and "professional attire" creates an appearances question

about lack-of-impartiality and the scales of justice being tipped instead of balanced. Does the court favor business over people?

[former9thward]

10. The OP and comment is about employees not the people facing the court.

The employees can afford to wear professional attire. As an attorney I always advise my clients to show up with decent clean clothing. People who show up wearing clothes like they think it is a joke generally will not be laughing when they leave.

[Trillo]

13. That's splitting a mighty fine hair regarding what you believe I wrote.

Last edited Thu Feb 20, 2014, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Presumably, without people facing the court, there'd be no need for any court, thus it seems a sort of psudoseparation. And, for the record, let me correct my use of the word "court" in my prior post and replace it with "court department" or merely "department". I did not mean to say or imply 'only in a courtroom.'

Some poor people who end up needing to go to court or related department may not have any "nice" clothes. I'd be one of those folks. If I take my jeans and t-shirts right from the dryer after a washing, and put them on, because they're old clothes, they won't look "nice and clean" even though they had just been laundered. The blue jeans are faded, often torn, and the t-shirts, the same. It is a fact of life for poor folks.

It's sad that by your own admission, poor folks would have a hard time in court merely because they are poor.

It seems to me that the court employees should be required to dress much like the majority of the people they serve. There's no reason to punish members of the public until after a sentence has been rendered.

[former9thward]

15. Court employees are not poor.

They can afford professional attire. The vast majority of people appearing in court are not poor. Your have a weird view of America if you think they are.

[Trillo]

16. Poverty is relative. I wonder about your assertions.

Court employees may be making close to a living wage. However, your assertion that most people who go to the courthouse for any reason are not poor, seems quite laughable.

[former9thward]

17. Laugh in your world.

I live in the real one.

[Trillo]

18. OT: Laugh and live. Not a bad strategy.

Maybe you should laugh more.

Bye

[Nye Bevan]

7. Nothing in the policy says "business suits" are required.

That means employees must keep their clothes "neat and clean ... and their hair clean and well-groomed in a reasonable style."

The policy expressly bans tank tops, cutoff shorts, beachwear, warm-ups and "thong-style" sandals.

No one enforced the dress code in recent years, however, and court officials say that's led to employees showing up in jeans and flip-flops.

So these folks are really complaining about no longer being able to wear jeans and flip-flops to work. I am absolutely fine with this policy.

[Jesus Malverde]

8. Fascist!

jking...

[Iggo]

9. Were they given sufficent (or any) warning that stricter enforcement of the dress code was coming?

Or did they just start writing people up out of the blue?

[Jesus Malverde]

11. They never changed the policy, it just seems it was never enforced.

One employee says...

He calls the new dress-code enforcement "just another tactic to clamp down on us because we have been more active in filing grievances."

So it might be part of overall labor issues.

[Iggo]

12. Yep, that's what I meant.

I changed my subject line to say enforcement instead of policy, but I think it was at the same time you were responding.

Sorry about that.

[Sheldon Cooper]

14. How dumb do you have to be to not realize that you need to dress appropriately for work?

Hoodies, tshirts and sneakers for Superior Court employees? Christ, I worked as a stock clerk at a retail grocer and they had higher standards for employee dress. Sorry, not sympathetic. Buy a few khakis and button downs, two ties and a sport coat, and then come in to work. Same for the women, too.