Employers are Obligated to Stop Harassment in Business and at Work

The story in the Albany Times Union last week:

Victims offer harrowing testimony

at sexual harassment hearing

ALBANY — Victims of sexual harassment and abuse by state officials and staff provided harrowing accounts of their experiences working in the Legislature as they testified before a panel of rapt lawmakers at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Leah Hebert, former chief of staff to Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a serial harasser who died in 2015 after being forced to resign, testified that her efforts to seek an investigation and to obtain protective measures for her staff were rebuffed. Instead, she was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The problem is (as is the problem with many employers, including but not limited to The Weinstein Companies) that in the case of former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, forcing complainants to sign a nondisclosure agreement did not stop Lopez’s serial / repeated harassment. Lopez’s employer – the NYS Assembly – did not stop the harassment, either.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance on investigating harassment provides that, “[a]s soon as management learns about alleged harassment, it should determine whether a detailed fact-finding investigation is necessary.” The employer then has an “obligation to take prompt effective steps that will end current harassment and deter future harassment by the harasser or others.” 

Do you as the employer investigate all instances of workplace harassment; and if harassment indeed occurs, do you stop it from happening again, in business and at work?