American federal law bans all workers from all forms of discrimination at the place of work. This discrimination can get based on religion, race, gender or even nationality. It can also take many forms and shapes. People can make lewd comments on race or religion. They can also negatively comment about an individual trait of a co-worker in a manner that hurts his or her feelings. In the modern workplace, discrimination is still a significant issue of concern that employers have to deal with.
An unfriendly work environment mainly encompasses primarily sexual harassment. People might have discussions that contain sexually vulgar language. They might even make crude sexual remarks about fellow workers. In most cases this form of harassment is gender based. The behavior gets perpetrated by men towards the women. A more serious of sexual harassment is when the act becomes physical. Some women have complained of “unwanted touch” whereby a male co-worker touched certain parts of her body without her consent. However, it is not only men who perpetrate sexual harassment. Women too get involved in sexual harassment, but the cases are much fewer and receive less attention (Burgess & Borgida, 1999).
However, vulgar language can get disputed as a form of sexual harassment. Sometimes workers might get engaged in a discussion in which they might make obscene remarks. However, they do not target the comments on a particular person. The discussion might involve sex, or the analysis of the human anatomy in a profane manner. A member of the workforce might happen to be listening to the conversation. Or still, the talk might be progressing in his or her presence. Though the comments do not target an individual, some people might get offended. Therefore, they view it as a form of sexual harassment.
Factors that affected the ruling
A court once mentioned, “Title VII is not a civility code at all. Not all profane or sexual language will constitute workplace discrimination. The Reeves ruling provides us with three major factors. These determinants provide helpful guidance for all employers.
The perceived hostility in the work environment that Reeves complained of did not qualify as gender neutral. The Plaintiff never experienced any exposure to the humiliation. Abusive employers did not also get away with tolerating pervasive and indiscriminate vulgarity.
Some types of vulgarity are degrading to women as opposed to men.
A ruling bench could correctly infer the obligatory intent to distinguish if the employee forwarded the complaint to the employer and if that conduct continued even when it was clearly not targeted at the plaintiff.
One general argument we can derive from this situation is that workplace vulgarity is not constantly actionable. It depends on the circumstance under which it happens (Selmi, 2000).
Basis of the court ruling
In this ruling, the jury heavily utilized Title VII in their arguments and final decision. The title states, "It is well established that racially offensive language does not need to get targeted at the plaintiff” (Murray & Eastwood, 2005). Such comments will offend a person belonging to the race under discussion regardless of whether or not he or she becomes the target. It is, therefore, uncouth to negatively discuss race in the place of work.
They also argued that the language might be more degrading to women than men. Though the discussions equally touched on male and female issues, women were more likely to get offended my some of the statements in comparison to men. They also stated that women should not get subjected to a sexually hostile environment just because men find some types of behavior acceptable in the work environment.
The discussed sexual jokes included both female and male sexual anatomy. They ranged from female pornography to masturbation to various sexual encounters and experiences. The jury saw to it that these topics got discussed in a manner more degrading to women than men. The bottom-line of the argument hence stated that even though the language got indiscriminately used and there was equal exposure of males and females, they were more degrading to women (Epstein, 1995).
Liability of an independent contractor
An independent contractor is one who is not officially employed by the company. He or she works on a temporary basis. This work arrangement typically gets called a contract. An agreement entails a job that needs to get accomplished within a certain time frame. After this period elapses, the contractor terminates the engagement and moves on.
When such a worker gets involved in sexual harassment, he or she bears individual liability. The complainant can either forward the offender to the management or can as well file charges against them in a court of law. When forwarded to the company management, disciplinary action can get taken against the offender. The decision might get based on the company’s terms of conduct and employee interrelations. On the other hand, when the plaintiff decides to file charges against the aggressor, the company will not take full responsibility for the offense.
They will defend themselves simply by claiming that, the offender was a contractor working on a temporary basis. In case the complaint was about employees of the company in general, then the company might get substantial liability in the case. The reason is that if an act by employees has always occurred repetitively and the institution does not take any action, then it means, the organization approves the behavior. The management would have to explain why the situation stands as it is. On the part of the contractor, however, the liability might only be partial.
References
Burgess, D., & Borgida, E. (1999). Who women are, who women should be: Descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotyping in sex discrimination. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 5(3), 665.
Epstein, R. A. (1995). Forbidden Grounds: The case against employment discrimination laws. Harvard University Press.
Murray, P., & Eastwood, M. O. (2005). Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII. Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 34, 232.
Selmi, M. (2000). Why are employment discrimination cases so hard to win? La. L. Rev., 61, 555.
