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It is against the law to harass an individual employee because of the person’s sex. Sexual harassment can involve sexual favor requests, unwelcome sex advances, as well as any other physical or verbal harassment of sexual nature. Sexual harassment may as well include offensive remarks about one’s sex. The law hardly prohibits simple teasing, isolated and unserious incidents, or offhand comments but it considers harassment as illegal when it becomes frequent or so severe such that it generates a hostile working environment such as in the case of the two women claiming to have been sexually harassed by their supervisor.
Sexual harassment can also create a situation of advanced employment decisions like demoting or firing employees. Sexual harassment is illegal when it violates the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This title mainly applies to the employers with at least 15 employees. Such employers can include state as well as the local government, employment agencies, labor organizations, and the federal government. Sexual harassment can be filed as a case when the behavioral conduct implicitly or explicitly affects one’s employment interferes with the person’s work performance, or the unwelcome behavior generates a working environment that is hostile, intimidating, or offensive. The law accepts claims from any situation whether the harassment comes from a different sex or same sex. The law also stipulates that the victim may not be the individual harassed but can be any other person affected by this offensive conduct (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2013).
The Auto Corp. organization should have been given notice within ten days after the case was first filed against the supervisor claimed to be the harasser. This notice should state that one of the organization’s supervisors has been charged with sexual harassment. To defend the claim, the Auto Corp. Organization should have conducted adequate investigation to find out all possible facts about the claims. The organization would investigate the behavioral pattern of the supervisor, which create a ground for the sexual harassment to the two women workers. The organization should also find out what relationships have been in existence between the two women and each one of them with the supervisor. This would be important to establish whether there is something behind the claims (Thomson Reuters business, 2013 ).
Sometimes a claim could be set to be a plot to avenge against someone. The organization would do this to find out whether there has been a kind of different conflict existing between the two women and the supervisor. Again, it would be necessary to find out the kind of sexual harassment being claimed. Sexual harassment could be of different types including sexual favor requests, unwelcome sex advances, as well as any other physical or verbal harassment of sexual nature. It would be important to listen to the women’s cases in order to distinguish their claim of sexual harassment from the rest. There could be more to the case than whatever is claimed to be sexual harassment. It would therefore be important for the company to investigate the case and hear the three parties out (The Ohio State University – Policies and Procedures, 2006).
It would be legally unacceptable for the Auto Corp. organization to remain silence despite the owners or management having knowledge about the sexual harassment claims. The law will assume that the organization encourages such issues within its work place and that the company is in support of the behavioral conduct of the supervisor. The company would be expected to have attempted resolving the problem through settlement or meditation process. Given that, Auto Corp. had knowledge of whatever happened it would be liable for such cases. There could be a conclusion that this case was hardly the first case and that there could be many other victims of sexual harassment within the organization (The Ohio State University – Policies and Procedures, 2006). The organization should thus gather adequate information that shows that the management was hardly aware of the case or was trying to resolve the problem and ensure compensation where necessary.
Mediation would be the best way of solving the problem. Mediation would involve a negotiation to resolve differences that is conducted by the impartial party. Through mediation, the organization or employer may be ready to offer compensation to the two women after establishing adequate information that they were sexually harassed. This action may attract other employees to establish false claims on the same case. Avoiding future claims would require the organization to take strict legal actions on the supervisor or carry out a based on the decision made by the organizational committee.
If the case has to be resolved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the owner should be ready to accept the claim based on the facts established but should defend the company by establishing that the case was the first of its kind and that the organization was trying to resolve the case. The owner can also prepare evidence to show that there was an attempt to resolve the problem locally but the two women were hardly contented with the organization’s decision (The Ohio State University – Policies and Procedures, 2006). A case of sexual harassment involving a work visa would have been different in the sense that workers working for multinational organizations are fully protected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Laws. Given a situation that the two women are foreign workers with a work visa, the EEO laws would be available to protect them against any cases of sexual harassment within the organization (Thomson Reuters business, 2013 ). The protection is offered irrespective of whether the employer is a citizen or a foreign employer. As long as the workers are within the working territories of the country, the EEO laws protect them and the employer should operate within the same laws.
References
The Ohio State University – Policies and Procedures. (2006, 1 7). Sexual Harassment Policy 1.15. Retrieved May 9, 2013, from osu.edu: http://hr.osu.edu/policy/policy115.PDF
Thomson Reuters business. (2013 ). Right When Working for Multinational Employers. Retrieved May 9, 2013 , from findlaw.com: http://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/dealing-with-multinational-employers.html
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2013). The Charge Handling Process. Retrieved May 9, 2013, from eeoc.gov: http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/process.cfm
