Slashdot Mirror
Sexual Harassment for Consultants?
Medcoop asks: "My friend is working as a consultant for a government institution, and is having a difficult time with his direct supervisor (the person who hired and manages him). She has been repeatedly asking him out (even though she is several decades his senior), and keeps referencing her preference for younger men. This isn't exactly sexual harassment, however, as he hasn't said 'No, and please stop asking.' The problem is that if he says the above, there won't be any more work for him there. He's not really fired, but just not asked back for other work. Where does this situation fall with respect to the law? Does anyone have any advice for him?"
Then that is sexual harassment, and he can treat it as such. Have him start documenting it.
Self mutilation?
It could be painful but may stop the old lady wanting some of his fine consulting ass.
I'd suggest consulting an attorney on the subject. Asking for legal advice on slashdot is somewhat foolish.
Yep.. I say take one for the team and do her. He may be pleasently suprised... :)
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
he's not really an employee, and thus can't be fired. No-one has the right to be contracted as an outside consultant, and having several deals as an outside consultant does not in any way constitute any kind of obligation.
The choice is simple for him. He can simply ask her to stop asking him out, and say no. If she continues, it's sexual harassment. If not, it isn't. If she stops using him as an outside consultant, then it's tough shit for him, for the above-reasons.
Consider this scenario. I regularly go to a hair-stylist who's a attractive woman, and regularly ask her out, and make comments about how pretty she is. She's more than welcomed to ask me to stop, and then if I continue, it's sexual harassment. But if I stop going there, then she has no legal grounds on which to complain.
Indeed, there is a good argument to be made that I was just doing whatever I could to obey the law, since -- being around her -- I just couldn't resist asking her that.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This isn't exactly sexual harassment, however, as he hasn't said 'No, and please stop asking.'
So why hasn't he told her to stop? Maybe she doesn't realize how much it's bothering him. Hell, from your description it's not even clear to me how much it's bothing him. If it's not that big of a bother to him, then he should just bare it. If it is creeping him out, then he needs to tell her that and not be a coward about not getting asked back for more work. Is this his only client or something? Part of the joy of being a consultant is that you can pick and choose your employer. He doesn't have to put up with that shit unless he wants to.
I don't understand why you are asking us about it. It seems like his course of action should be clear *if* he is clear about his own feelings on the matter. Either it's a big deal to him or it isn't.
GMD
watch this
He could pretend to be gay - subtle at first and then more 'out' about it.
He could also meet a girlfriend/fiancé for lunch, and plan it so that his boss sees his partner. This partner could be just a friend - the boss is not likely to know the difference.
Or he could combine both of the above and meet a pretend boyfriend for lunch?
Definately document the harassment - to use just in case the situation gets worse.
Consider this scenario. I regularly go to a hair-stylist who's a attractive woman, and regularly ask her out, and make comments about how pretty she is. She's more than welcomed to ask me to stop, and then if I continue, it's sexual harassment.
I'm not sure she could claim sexual harassment since you don't have any power over her. It's not like you're her boss. It may not be particularly nice of you but I don't think she would have any legal recourse against you. Most likely she would simply refuse to allow you into her shop. If she kept letting you be a customer even with your past, unwanted advances towards her, I think she'd have a hard time convincing the court that she was being coerced into sexual relations with you.
GMD
watch this
Tell him to just go out with her. geez. He's got a chance to move up in the world by sleeping with the boss and he's passing it up?
Wrong. It can be interpreted as sexual harassment regardless of your reluctance to state it as a problem. However, nothing can be done unless you alert the issue to the next person in line of management. When a manager is the source of sexual harassment, the liability on your employer is higher. If this woman has "hire and fire" abilities, she is potentially costing your company a great amount of money, and should be alerted to begin with. Second, while you may not want to sue the person, filing a BOLI (or equivalent to your jurisdiction) complaint against your employer, who cannot legally retaliate against you in any way.)
Your status as a consultant (as ,I a person who merely works in an employment defense law firm and reads dozens of pleadings of this nature a day, can advise you) may complicate matters, but shouldn't entirely limit your employer's liability.
Examine any handbook that you received. You can easily construe your work environment as being hostile because of this as well, claim (dis)stress damages, and onward.
But... I have a feeling that you just want this to stop, and talking to a higher level supervisor should solve your problem quickly. Be sure to exhaust any administrative remedies as you can muster. There are always better ways to solve a problem than litigation.
I am not a lawyer, etc. etc.
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
Your friend should go the the Human Resources department, and file a complaint.
Then, if your friend's contract is terminated without cause, he can bring a whistle-blower suit.
But I doubt that will happen. I think this is a more likely scenario:
Your Friend <knocks on doorframe>
HR person: Hello, come in, how may I help you?
YF: Well, it's like this - I'm a contractor, and my supervisor from this shop keeps hitting on me. I've asked her to stop, but she keeps doing it. Here's a copy of the last letter I wrote to her about it....
HR <snatching letter>: Let me see that. Hmmmmm, ummmhmmm. OK. Do you wish to file a formal complaint?
YF: I'd like this to stop. If it stops without a complaint, that would be best, but....
HR: OK. Excuse me. I must go kill somebody now. <Exits office at warp speed.>
Believe me - IF your friend documents the request to stop the harrasment, they will be VERY careful about any action against him - even if they WERE going to terminate his contract for some other reason, they will make sure to have all their ducks, their friend's ducks, and any ducks that happen to be passing by on migration in a row before they do.
Whistle-blower suits cause a lot a pain and suffering to organizations....
www.eFax.com are spammers
There are two ways you can approach this problem, legal and practical.
Legally you have been wronged (although to prove it you have to have a record, and have to rebuff her in obvious ways). Practically, you have a dilema. I think the OP was asking about practical solutions.
Practically, don't lead her on and don't spit in her face. Either is disingenuous. Are you doing the job? do your job. Are you looking to cash in on a lawsuit? sue.
Discrimination/harassment/people don't love you is a fact of life. People that can't hide irrational prejudice lose in the long run. On the margins, shit happens. Deal.
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
Then again, this guy seems to be assuming that he only has two choices: play the gigolo, or face losing his consulting contracts. With a little self-esteem and a little tact, one could probably let down a sexually aggressive boss without provoking a crisis. Alas, Slashdotters are not notable for self-esteem or tact. Perhaps the question should be directed to a psychologist. Or an advice columnist. Even an ettiquite expert would probably give better advice!
My Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending in Four Countries) is to go ahead and reciprocate on her advances, tell her you're going to send her a photo of you nekkid, and forward her a picture of our dear beloved friend.
.cs?)
For those of you who do not have the domain warnings turned on, that link should be followed by a [goatse.cx]. For those of you new to Slashdot you can directly translate that to Don't Click On That Link (TM, Copyright 2004 Slashdot Inc., "No Click Does Nothing" technology Patent # 4,234,123).
Also note for once, I'm not checking the link, so that may not be quite right. (Is it supposed to end in
If that doesn't turn her off of you, nothing will.
This has been Slashdot Legal Advice (TM, Copyright 2003 Slashdot Inc., Patent Pending now in Five Countries). Remember, whatever you do, when you need legal advice do not seek out a professional attorney when you can have the benefit and wisdom of hundreds of random yahoos who could not care less about your plight.
I guess the easy way to get her to stop asking would be to just say yes.
Tell your friend to go out on a date with the woman. On that date, have him drop some pretty major hints that he's one of the following:
1. closet gay, shy about coming out;
2. still recovering from a STD;
3. unable to sustain an erection because of a personal trauma;
4. maintaining a long distance relationship with a girl he's never met but hopes to meet up with in a year a so;
5. currently celibate because of a bad breakup;
6. saving himself for when he's married.
Any of these give him plenty of reasons not to take up her advances yet give her slim hope for the future. With any luck, that slim hope will translate into getting your friend more work beyond his current contract but lessening the attention that he'll get from his supervisor.
Remember, the trick is getting her to back off from being all over him but without making her feel totally rejected. If she thinks the door might be open for her just a crack, or that it might open for her down the line, then she'll have a reason to keep him around.
At the very least, your friend should try to avoid a confrontation at any cost. If he doesn't "break her heart" then she might keep him on as eye candy. If he does, then she might just bitch about him "not being a team player" or "having an attitude" to other potential employers.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"Put a flag over her head and do it for your country!"
-- My brother, though I'm sure it's not originally his.
If this was a normal employment relationship, there would be two issues: first, sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal; second, firing someone for complaining about sexual harassment is also illegal.
Unfortunately, I believe one of the downsides to working as a consultant is that terminaing a contract for complaining about sexual harassment is not a problem (unless the termination is against the provisions of the contract, but it sounds like, in this case, the contract simply wouldn't be renewed).
However, the harassment is still against the law, and her supervisor would have to follow proper procedure if you were to tell him/her, but the supervisor is not required to give future work to your friend.
Funny how this sounds like the same glass wall/ceiling that women and minorities have been running into for years, eh?
I can't believe no one has posted this yet:
Is she hot?
Tell him to post a picture if he expects to get a good response from this crowd.
I can see all of the little geeks at home: "Ooo, I can get hired to code and older women will hit on me!"
A speech...
Given that there is no expectation of privacy in the corporate environment, you're probably home-free to secretly tape record conversations from a privacy and eavesdropping standpoint. If a manager can spy on employees then someone can do the same to the managers, especially since sexual harassment is very much the company's business.
Taped proof may be enough to "buy insurance" if shared quietly with the manager or manager's manager - assuming that's actually what you want. I'd probably be too disgusted to want to work there anymore. Anyway. Share only a copy of the tape(s); keep the original safe and, if truly paranoid, set up a failsafe with a friend or two: if they don't get a hold code from you by a certain time, trigger a broad release.
In this case, I'd tape record the next harassing conversation, at which you tell the harrasser "no", and then follow up with further secret taping in case there is retaliation. Lawyers *are* a waste of time and money; this kind of situation requires cold-blooded vigilantism.
If all goes well, you destroy the tapes, problem solved, no damage done. If not, forget lawyers; just go for the kill. If she retaliates, go to her, play the tapes and explain the "new world order" that now exists: the tape(s) goes to her manager, her church, her neighbors, the local TV and radio, the net, her husband, her employees, her peer manager, the VPs, etc. if any retaliation occurs/continues and things are not completely back to status quo ante within a week or less. Quite simply her entire social, financial and profession network will be utterly destroyed if things don't go back to the up-and-up asap.
Of course, you may get undeserved benefits and job opportunities but she fscked up, not you. You're just being "made whole" and if she overdoes it that's her problem. Somebody else can bushwhack her for favoritism, she probably deserves to be hit more than once.
If she screams blackmail and then tries to back that up, be prepared to walk and say you will walk *and* release the tapes anyway (i.e. it's not about the money but honor). That will likely make her think twice about it because there's nothing to back her story up (you don't need the salary as much as your honor so how could their be blackmail?) and everything to back up yours (the tapes made public).
She may call you bluff but imagine the joy for following through with it! Imagine forcing her to retire early in disgrace or even forfeit future employability. Imagine if she gets another job and her new company gets copies of the tapes with a note saying: "Now that you've listened to these tapes, can you company afford the legal liability of employing this person?". We all know that most chickenshite companies will cave on this. Repeat for every job she gets. If she threatens to sue, tell her: "Please go right ahead. I'd love to have my day court and have these tapes permanently entered into the public record for all to see, forever! I'd love to have press conferences on national TV where I get to hand out copies to every reporter on the planet. Yes, please, let's!"
If it's government and classified there are big legal issues with tape recorders. On the other hand I've observed that security guards in classified environments always freak out about actual tape recorders and floppies but completely ignore solid-state recorders and USB thumb drives. Still too big a risk if you work with classified materials. So instead you need a witness surreptitiously present. Set up the manager with a meeting situation similar to previous times. Make sure the witness can hear or see but not be heard or seen. Two witnesses is better. More is best.
In general, I would still back this up with other employment plans as "scorched earth" (you lose job-they lose whatever you can get) is a likely end-game in any case. You
*applause*.
They're called gonads. He needs to grow a pair and say "Look, I get the impression that you're making advances on me. If you weren't, hey, sorry for misinterpreting you, and please disregard the rest of this speech, which will make no sense to you. If you were, hey, I'm awful flattered, but I wanna level with you that I'm not interested in that sort of thing. I'm here to work with $TECH, to deliver a working $DELIVERABLE, and to earn a few bucks while doing so. Nothing less, and nothing more. I get all the fulfillment I need from doing a good job with $TECH, that's why your organization hired me, why I took you on as a customer, and that's why I'm here."
(Note: At no time should he say "As a professional, I don't believe in having relationships with my customers or co-workers". That could be mis-interpreted as "I won't do anything as long as I work here, but the day you fire me, we can have lots of hot monkey sex!")
If she can't take "no" for an answer, then he can decide whether to fuck her into the space age, or sue her into the stone age.
But until he grows a pair and says "No", he's got no right to complain, because he's not a mindreader - he can't assume she knows her advances are unwelcome until he tells her to knock it off.
(Gonads are great, but he should also use his pair of his brains. Once he grows a pair of gonads and decides to have this conversation, he should also heed his brains... and hide a tape recorder or mini-video cam. A laptop with FireWire and a DV-recorder, a hole in the laptop case, and a bit of hot glue, should do the trick.)