Hi everyone, I hope this is the right place to ask this and if it's not please let me know I'll remove the post right away :). A couple months ago, the owner of the store I work in (in California) came in especially angry at us. Triggered by the fact we hadn't put a “sold out” sign on a coin machine, he continued to scream at us about how he would “never use a trans person's preferred pronouns because that's stupid and made up” in front of all the customers. How a sold out coin machine can lead to that I can't really tell you, he'll use any reason to yell at us. Someone reported him to HR but given he pays HR all they did was made us sign something saying they held a harassment meeting.
This isn't the first time he's come in like this. There are several accounts of him harassing my coworkers, he's even taken it to the point of calling them “rtrds” and making them cry. Luckily I'm still new enough that he doesn't acknowledge me when he comes, regardless of that I hate seeing my coworkers be treated like that.
If we were to record him coming in and saying all these things, would we be able to use it to report him for workplace violence? Would that fall under OSHA guidelines? I would honestly appreciate any information on how to fight this given I'm not very familiar with labor laws yet.
tldr: In California, can I record my boss's abusive behavior and use it to report him? If not, how can we defend ourselves against him?