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A Continuing Issue in the USA: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Stop!

Many times the human mind seems to allow trespasses against human rights in other parts of the world appear more inhumane than the ones that occur on our own turf. In the US, we have laws protecting people from having unwanted sexual advances pressed upon them from their co-workers and bosses. And yet, the problem continues to persist. Within the last month, three major cases of sexual harassment have come into the view of the American people. All of the cases involve restaurant workers.

At the beginning of November, a group of workers at Senor Frogs filed a class-action law suit against the CEO and upper-management for groping, propositioning, and demanding sex from lower level workers in the restaurant chain. Not even a week later, a single mother who worked for over ten years in a Waffle House filed a claim against the CEO of that company for demanding that she perform sexual acts with him in order to keep her job. Also, a major steakhouse in New York City just settled a claim for male-on-male sexual harassment between managers and restaurant workers. In fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Council is seeing a trend of more cases of male-on-male sexual harassment.

While one could say that we are lucky in America to have a legal system and an infrastructure which allows people to bring these sorts of cases, clearly there’s a gap between what we’ve enacted as a priority and how that is often gets translated on the ground. It is beyond dispute that most folks in the United States believe that people deserve to work in a non-threatening work environment where what matters most is the quality of their efforts on the job. Maybe these more public cases of sexual harassment will raise red flags to management and to workers alike to be more aware of their surroundings and to make sure that their place of employment is a safe one.

However, these cases also raise a larger issue – namely how do we reconcile our view of “civil rights” with the world’s view of “human rights.” Right now, there seems to be a disconnect – one where we tend to feel that issues of discrimination (sexism, racism, etc?) that we deal with here in the U.S. are somehow different from the issues that other countries face. We talk about an American’s “civil rights” as if it were separate from the rights that are embodied in numerous human rights treaties – on issues like the right to self-determination and treatment that is free from discrimination. This is problematic. In essence, it diminishes the very real feeling of dis-empowerment that many Americans feel when they face this treatment – to mere statutory claims (one that can be more closely aligned to a speeding ticket than a fundamental human right). Instead, we need to elevate these issues to what they really are – human rights claims.

Relegating these challenges to the specifically American framework of civil rights also serves to isolate many U.S. advocates whose causes and issues could organically be linked to other global advocates who are fighting similar, if not identical issues. It seems clear that there is common ground between a restaurant worker being harassed in the United States and a female laborer being sexually exploited in the Middle East. Uniting these cause might bring about a more effective change.

Scholars, including Lisa Crooms at Howard University School of Law, are now leading the call to do away with this distinction. For instance, Prof. Crooms calls for the restructuring of our United States Commission on Civil Rights to instead become a U.S. Human Rights Commission. Doing so, she argues, would lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the issues we Americans face. Looking at the restaurant business these days, I can’t help but think that she’s right.

Photo Credit: http://www.zrawa.com/sexual-harassment-in-the-workplace.php

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