Are Sexual Harassment Laws STILL Too Vague?
Q: The Supreme Court has given two rulings which help clarify the
frequently murky ground of workplace sexual harassment. Among the
court's holdings was that an employee who resists a supervisor's
advances need not have suffered a tangible job detriment, such as
dismissal or loss of a promotion, in order to be able to pursue a
lawsuit against the company. But such a suit cannot succeed, the court
said, if the company has an anti-harassment policy with an effective
complaint procedure in place and the employee has unreasonably failed to
use it. Note that the laws are not written to favor either sex. Women
can be charged as well as men. Do you think that sexual harassment laws
are *still* too vague?
A: Sexual harassment can be defined in two ways. First it can be some demand of trade of sexual services for employment or promotion. This is the most obvious kind of harassment. Secondly, it can be the creation of a hostile workforce based upon gender. Here is where most of the ambiguity arises since what may seem hostile to one person (or gender) may not seem hostile to the other. Second problem is what we mean by an "effective complaint procedure". Does the procedure have to rule in the victim's favour for it to be effective? Of course not, but it must provide a reasonable way for the victim to complain and it must