Sexual harassment - 2009 versions

More recently, employers have developed high sensitivity to charges of sexual harassment in the workplace. Litigious employees who decided that they wouldn’t take it any more, coupled with law firms possessing the knowledge and skill to obtain nice judgments on behalf of their clients, have brought some previously free-wheeling companies to heel.

Scant attention is paid to those pioneers in the past few decades who endured backlash and worse from monied employers and their in-house counsel . . . they were the ground-breakers. Suggestive texting, snide comments, slyly worded e-mails are some of today’s methods used by those who still try age old harassment techniques with co-workers or even clients and customers.

There is another facet to this problem and its solutions. Today, thanks to the courageous few through the past decades who hung in there to effect change, through the legal system primarily, there are few employees who feel that they are completely without support, if not from their companies, from the public, their co-workers, (even including middle management) and certainly the media. In other words, this type of behavior just isn’t hidden anymore, by anyone involved. Unwanted attentions can’t be easily forced on people who know their rights and have sympathetic backup. In the not so distant past, a person who was subjected to sexual harassment and who complained about it was isolated, often even vilified, by employers.

It is great to be alive and observant in today’s world, where it isn’t ‘us’ against ‘them’ but together we stand, divided we fall. Hard-boiled, insensitive responses from an employer of today regarding harassment issues simply don’t cut it anymore. It appears that we’re getting there.