There can be legal redress

In an address at a ‘Sexual Harassment in the Workplace’ workshop yesterday at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s Seebaran-Suite told human resources professionals that the EOC has the mandate to receive and conciliate complaints in relation to sexual discrimination including sexual harassment in the workplace.

The workshop, which was facilitated by the EOC was organised by the Association of Female Executives of TT and the Human Resources Management Association of TT (HRMATT). Noting that statistics are not available on sexual harassment cases in the workplace, she said the EOC has been receiving complaints, but not in overwhelming numbers.

The EOC is at the stage, she said, where with other stakeholders, it is looking at institutionalising the best methods to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace. “Sexual harassment is a problem that has been with us for many years,” she said.

The EOC has a mandate to receive and conciliate complaints in certain areas, she said, and one of those areas is employment which covers sexual discrimination. “Sexual discrimination includes sexual harassment in the work place. So that if a victim of sexual harassment in the workplace does not receive satisfaction after making a complaint within the workplace so that they can get the problem solved, they can come to the EOC for a remedy as the law now exists,” she said.

Seebaran-Suite said sexual harassment is a problem that occurs in every kind of organisation and in the Caribbean it affects women more than men.

Several large employers in TT in the banking and conglomerate sector, the public sector and the energy sector have already enacted codes to provide a channel for lodging complaints and seeking redress, she said.

“This should involve training and retraining ideally conducted by human resource departments, which are usually well equipped to conduct training of this nature,” she said.

She defined sexual harassment as “the unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace, at an unwilling victim to whom that misconduct is offensive, disturbing, upsetting, worrying and/or psychologically harmful. It may be severe or pervasive enough to affect the person’s ability to cope in what may become an increasingly hostile work environment.”