Dawn Of War 2 Retribution Trainer
Vaniria Setser
Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized claims for sexual harassment as a form of discrimination based on sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the years that followed, courts have filled in the legal landscape even further.
Six years ago, when we came to EEOC as commissioners, we were struck by how many cases of sexual harassment EEOC continues to deal with every year. What was further striking to us were the number of complaints of harassment on every other basis protected under equal employment opportunity laws the Commission deals with today. We are deeply troubled by what we have seen during our tenure on the Commission.
With legal liability long ago established, with reputational harm from harassment well known, with an entire cottage industry of workplace compliance and training adopted and encouraged for 30 years, why does so much harassment persist and take place in so many of our workplaces? And, most important of all, what can be done to prevent it? After 30 years - is there something we've been missing?
As commissioners of an enforcement agency, we could have taken a cynical approach. We could have assumed that some people will always engage in harassment and that we cannot expect to control how people behave in increasingly diverse workplaces. That is especially so in an environment where every manner of rude, crude, or offensive material can be accessed and shared with others with a few strokes on a phone. We could have suggested that the Commission simply continue to do what it has done well for decades - investigate and settle charges, bring litigation, provide legal guidance, hear complaints from federal employees, and provide outreach and education.
Accordingly, we present this "Report of the Co-Chairs of the EEOC Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace." We offer this report to our fellow commissioners, the EEOC community nationwide, our state partners, employers, employees and labor unions, and academics, foundations, and community leaders across the country. We present this report with a firm, and confirmed, belief that too many people in too many workplaces find themselves in unacceptably harassing situations when they are simply trying to do their jobs.
While we offer suggestions in this report for what EEOC can do to help prevent harassment, we caution that our agency is only one piece of the solution. Everyone in society must feel a stake in this effort. That is the only way we will achieve the goal of reducing the level of harassment in our workplaces to the lowest level possible.
This report, including the recommendations we set forth, could not have been prepared without the work of the Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace that was established by EEOC Chair Jenny Yang over a year ago. The Select Task Force consisted of a select group of outside experts impaneled to examine harassment in our workplaces - its causes, its effects, and what can be better done to prevent it. We served as co-chairs of this task force. Our experts included management and plaintiffs' attorneys, representatives of employee and employer advocacy groups, labor representatives, and academics who have studied this field for years - sociologists, psychologists, and experts in organizational behavior. Because our group was heavy on lawyers, we deliberately fashioned an interdisciplinary approach that considered the social science on harassment in the workplace. Some of what we learned surprised us; everything we learned illuminated our understanding of this complex human issue.
We thank the members of our Select Task Force for volunteering their expertise over this past year - asking the difficult questions, shaping our discussions, and sharpening our inquiry. This is not a consensus report. It is the report of the two of us as co-chairs, based on the testimony, research, expertise, and guidance we received and reviewed along with our task force members over the past year. Nor is it a report focused on the legal issues concerning workplace harassment. It is a report focused on prevention of unwelcome conduct based on characteristics protected under our employment civil rights laws, even before such conduct might rise to the level of illegal harassment
We thank all of our witnesses for the expertise they offered at our eight meetings over the past year. We could not have written this report without the work they put into educating us and the members of the Select Task Force.
We do not pretend to have all the answers for a reboot of workplace harassment prevention. We need the active engagement of every reader of this report to provide ideas and solutions on an ongoing basis.
As co-chairs of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace ("Select Task Force"), we have spent the last 18 months examining the myriad and complex issues associated with harassment in the workplace. Thirty years after the U.S. Supreme Court held in the landmark case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson that workplace harassment was an actionable form of discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we conclude that we have come a far way since that day, but sadly and too often still have far to go.
Created in January 2015, the Select Task Force was comprised of 16 members from around the country, including representatives of academia from various social science disciplines; legal practitioners on both the plaintiff and defense side; employers and employee advocacy groups; and organized labor. The Select Task Force reflected a broad diversity of experience, expertise, and opinion. From April 2015 through June 2016, the Select Task Force held a series of meetings - some were open to the public, some were closed working sessions, and others were a combination of both. In the course of a year, the Select Task Force received testimony from more than 30 witnesses, and received numerous public comments.
Throughout this past year, we sought to deploy the expertise of our Select Task Force members and our witnesses to move beyond the legal arena and gain insights from the worlds of social science, and practitioners on the ground, on how to prevent harassment in the workplace. We focused on learning everything we could about workplace harassment - from sociologists, industrial-organizational psychologists, investigators, trainers, lawyers, employers, advocates, and anyone else who had something useful to convey to us.
Because our focus was on prevention, we did not confine ourselves to the legal definition of workplace harassment, but rather included examination of conduct and behaviors which might not be "legally actionable," but left unchecked, may set the stage for unlawful harassment.
This report is written by the two of us, in our capacity as Co-Chairs of the Select Task Force. It does not reflect the consensus view of the Select Task Force members, but is informed by the experience and observations of the Select Task Force members' wide range of viewpoints, as well as the testimony and information received and reviewed by the Select Task Force. Our report includes analysis and recommendations for a range of stakeholders: EEOC, the employer community, the civil rights community, other government agencies, academic researchers, and other interested parties. We summarize our key findings below.
Workplace Harassment Remains a Persistent Problem. Almost fully one third of the approximately 90,000 charges received by EEOC in fiscal year 2015 included an allegation of workplace harassment. This includes, among other things, charges of unlawful harassment on the basis of sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy), race, disability, age, ethnicity/national origin, color, and religion. While there is robust data and academic literature on sex-based harassment, there is very limited data regarding harassment on other protected bases. More research is needed.
Workplace Harassment Too Often Goes Unreported. Common workplace-based responses by those who experience sex-based harassment are to avoid the harasser, deny or downplay the gravity of the situation, or attempt to ignore, forget, or endure the behavior. The least common response to harassment is to take some formal action - either to report the harassment internally or file a formal legal complaint. Roughly three out of four individuals who experienced harassment never even talked to a supervisor, manager, or union representative about the harassing conduct. Employees who experience harassment fail to report the harassing behavior or to file a complaint because they fear disbelief of their claim, inaction on their claim, blame, or social or professional retaliation.
There Is a Compelling Business Case for Stopping and Preventing Harassment. When employers consider the costs of workplace harassment, they often focus on legal costs, and with good reason. Last year, EEOC alone recovered $164.5 million for workers alleging harassment - and these direct costs are just the tip of the iceberg. Workplace harassment first and foremost comes at a steep cost to those who suffer it, as they experience mental, physical, and economic harm. Beyond that, workplace harassment affects all workers, and its true cost includes decreased productivity, increased turnover, and reputational harm. All of this is a drag on performance - and the bottom-line.
It Starts at the Top - Leadership and Accountability Are Critical. Workplace culture has the greatest impact on allowing harassment to flourish, or conversely, in preventing harassment. The importance of leadership cannot be overstated - effective harassment prevention efforts, and workplace culture in which harassment is not tolerated, must start with and involve the highest level of management of the company. But a commitment (even from the top) to a diverse, inclusive, and respectful workplace is not enough. Rather, at all levels, across all positions, an organization must have systems in place that hold employees accountable for this expectation. Accountability systems must ensure that those who engage in harassment are held responsible in a meaningful, appropriate, and proportional manner, and that those whose job it is to prevent or respond to harassment should be rewarded for doing that job well (or penalized for failing to do so). Finally, leadership means ensuring that anti-harassment efforts are given the necessary time and resources to be effective.
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