Unemployment Benefits: Employers Committing Perjury

Late last year, my boyfriend Justin asked if I’d help one of his friends here in Boystown with a problem he was having with his job; the friend, whom I’ll call “Jazz” for our purposes (which is what happens when you let people pick their own narrative aliases), worked in one of the bars here in Chicago and was being sexually harassed by his male boss — who’d grope him, show him dirty pictures of things he wanted him to do, and would repeatedly tell him (in front of customers) that he wanted to see him dressed in this or that piece of fetish gear.  Jazz complained and the owner of the bar fired him shortly after Jazz filed a formal EEOC charge on the matter regarding sexual harassment in the workplace.  That matter’s still playing out with the EEOC, but in the meantime the owner of the bar blacklisted Jazz in Boystown to other bar owners (telling them not to hire him because he was “trouble” and complained to the EEOC) and has been filing meritless challenges to Jazz’s unemployment benefits as further punishment for the EEOC complaint.