Short answer. No. The law makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against, discharge, or reduce the wages and benefits of any employee who has testified or is about to testify in a proceeding under this part of the Labor Code, or who filed a complaint or instituted such a proceeding.
What the law says
It shall be unlawful for an employer to refuse to pay or reduce the wages and benefits, discharge or in any manner discriminate against any employee who has filed any complaint or instituted any proceeding under this Title or has testified or is about to testify in such proceedings.
Labor Code, Article 118 — Retaliation Prohibited. Read the full provision →
What the provision protects against
The rule names several specific retaliatory acts an employer is barred from taking against a covered employee: refusing to pay or reducing wages and benefits, discharging the employee, or discriminating against them in any manner. That last phrase is broad by design, reaching retaliation that does not fit neatly into a pay cut or a firing but still amounts to punishing the employee for their involvement in the proceeding.
Testifying is expressly covered, not just filing
The protection is not limited to the employee who personally filed the complaint. It extends to anyone who has testified or is about to testify in a proceeding under the relevant part of the Labor Code. A coworker who steps forward as a witness in someone else's labor case is, by the plain terms of this provision, someone the employer is barred from retaliating against for that testimony.
Note the words is about to testify. The protection does not wait for the witness to take the stand, which matters because retaliation is often pre-emptive — the schedule change, the sudden reassignment, the withheld allowance that arrives once the employer learns a subpoena or an affidavit is coming. Retaliation aimed at stopping testimony is within the provision just as squarely as punishment for testimony already given.
The proceeding has to fall under the covered title
The protection attaches to complaints filed or proceedings instituted, and testimony given or about to be given, under this Title of the Labor Code. That ties the protection to labor-related proceedings within that part of the law, rather than to every dispute an employee might ever be a witness to. Whether a particular case a coworker filed falls within that scope is the threshold question for whether this specific protection applies. Article 118 sits within the Labor Code's Title on Wages, the same title that governs wage deductions, deposits, and withholding. Its clearest application is testimony in a wage-related proceeding — a dispute over unpaid wages, deductions, or similar wage claims — rather than every kind of labor case an employee might ever witness.
If you are facing this
An employee who is demoted, has pay withheld or reduced, is dismissed, or is otherwise treated worse at work because they testified, or were expected to testify, in a coworker's labor proceeding is describing exactly the retaliation this provision is meant to prevent. Keeping a record of when the testimony happened or was expected, and how your treatment at work changed afterward, helps establish the connection between the two.
What the provision does not do is make every setback that follows a hearing unlawful. The link between the testimony and the treatment is what has to be shown, so an employer with a documented performance problem that predates the case is arguing about something else. Where the retaliation took the form of pay being reduced or held back, Article 116 may be engaged as well, since it separately forbids withholding an employee's wages.