Sexual Harassment Training
In our Sexual Harassment Awareness
training seminars your employees will learn and apply
the important skills of handling sexual harassment issues
and complaints. This hands on workshop thoroughly addresses
the elements of how to
prevent unacceptable
behavior. The class includes a detailed
overview of what sexual
harassment is, explains legal definitions, discusses sexual
harassment prevention, and shows how to handle sexual
harassment complaints and maintain a positive work
environment.
For more information about individual sexual harassment
training courses please complete
this form. Once the form is received one of our
consultants will provide you with a confidential proposal
that will include a detailed description of the training
seminar and the costs for conducting it.
Sexual Harassment Training: Clarifying Sexual Harassment Laws
When the Supreme Court first declared sexual harassment illegal more than a decade ago, the immediate effect was confusion.
Were dirty jokes around the water cooler off limits? Could a supervisor compliment a worker's dress? Is a swimsuit calendar inappropriate?
The answers weren't so easy because the court's landmark opinion, while sweeping in scope, provided few details. That job was left to the lower courts, which have drawn some radically different conclusions about what constitutes illegal sexual harassment and when a company is responsible.
In a recent opinion, Richard Posner, chief judge of the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, all but begged the justices to once again enter the fray.
"Perhaps the Supreme Court," Posner wrote after the appeals court could not agree on the law, "will bring order to the chaotic case law in this important field of practice."
As the issue of sexual harassment has dominated front pages and coffee shop chatter this year, so too has it preoccupied the Supreme Court. Already it has heard three significant cases that will give new focus to the often murky law, and this week, it will take up the fourth and possibly most controversial.
It is the same Chicago case Posner had urged the justices to review. In it, the court will decide whether an employee can sue for sexual harassment even if she suffers no tangible job setbacks after rebuffing her supervisor's advances.
"The significance of the case is, how far does a supervisor have to go before the company is held liable or exonerated?" said Ernest Rossiello, the lawyer for Kimberly Ellerth, who sued her employer after a supervisor allegedly harassed her. "Are mere threats or intimidating remarks sufficient to sustain the claim or does the woman have to suffer an economic or tangible job detriment?"
The case is important on its own because it could greatly expand the scope of sexual-harassment law, but it takes on an added dimension, lawyers said, because it intersects with Paula Jones' sexual-harassment lawsuit against President Clinton.
After a Little Rock, Ark., judge this month threw her claim out of court, Jones' lawyers said the Supreme Court could revive it in the Chicago case. That's because U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright said Jones' claim was faulty, in part, because she hadn't suffered any economic harm.
Source: Jan Greenburg
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