The California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) protects employees from discrimination, retaliation, and harassment on the basis of their race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, martial status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or veteran or military status.
June 25, 2019
The Job Shouldn’t Mean an Open Door for Sexual Harassment
Those who work in certain industries receive an unfair characterization from others. For instance, there is a museum on the East Coast dedicated to sex. One of the workers there says that she and others suffered through continuous sexual harassment from customers. She claims her employer did nothing about it.
It does not matter what industry people here in California or elsewhere work in — they do not deserve to be treated with disrespect or harassed simply because of the jobs they do. The woman in this case says not just customers harassed them, but other staff members did so as well. Customers and staff were supposedly intoxicated while in the museum during some of these instances, which more than likely only made them more brazen.
The former Museum of Sex employee says that the harassment ranged from inappropriate language and comments to groping. She was often asked about her sex life, too. The woman goes on to say that she and others made numerous complaints to management, but none of the concerns appear to have been adequately addressed. Then the museum wanted to expand its hours, which employees felt would only draw more intoxicated customers whose behavior could not be predicted.
An individual’s job description does not mean they deserve a work environment fraught with sexual harassment. California may not have a Museum of Sex as New York does, though it does have shops and other locations in the same genre. It would violate state and federal law for an employer to allow this type of behavior to occur unchecked, whether it is a customer or a staff member perpetrating it. Victims may exercise their right to file a complaint regarding this or any other type of harassment or discrimination going on in their workplaces.
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