UNITED STATES
Vox
February 7, 2018
By Alexia Fernández Campbell
They describe a work environment where groping and sexual requests from co-workers were rampant.
In late 2011, a 16-year-old girl from suburban St. Louis landed her first job as a waitress at a local IHOP restaurant. She needed to work there for at least a year to complete her high school co-op program. At first, it made her uncomfortable when her boss repeatedly complimented her appearance. Within a few months, his behavior made her terrified to go to work.
The Illinois teen’s fear of getting fired — and not graduating on time — led her to put up with escalating sexual harassment from the restaurant’s general manager, according to allegations described in federal court documents filed in September. At one point, the manager allegedly threatened to “get violent” if she didn’t have sex with him.
Ten of the waitress’s female co-workers described similar experiences with two male cooks at the restaurant in a sexual harassment lawsuit they filed together in September 2017 against the IHOP franchise owner. They all accused the general manager and other supervisors of ignoring their complaints — and even condoning the behavior in some cases.
Those complaints were just a few of the nearly 7,000 sexual harassment reports against employers that were reviewed in 2017 by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which enforces federal civil rights laws. Sexual harassment at work is a form of illegal gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The women each filed a separate EEOC complaint, and the EEOC decided to file a class-action lawsuit on their behalf.
Sexual harassment is a particularly serious problem in restaurant and hotel jobs. From 2005 to 2015, hotel and restaurant workers filed at least 5,000 sexual harassment complaints with the EEOC — more than any other industry, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress. This number represents only a fraction of all complaints filed by restaurant workers, as only about half of the 85,000 sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC in that time frame designated a specific industry.
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