We just wrote about the EEOC’s crackdown on employers who exploit vulnerable workers, i.e., “ migrant workers, workers in isolated areas, and mentally-challenged Henry’s Turkey workers.” We should have included younger or teen workers, as a series of articles in the The Oregonian makes clear. We didn’t overlook teen workers, but simply forgot, as our previous posts demonstrate.
It should come as no surprise that victims of harassment are more often of relatively low status and power in the workplace. As with people victimized throughout society, they are more often the victims of this “power differential.”
On December 27, 2012 we published the following about low status and power differential in the workplace correlating with sexual harassment of younger workers:
burgers are more likely to be sexually harassed by older co-workers than adult employees, and more likely to be harassed than adolescents in jobs that provided more meaningful work and autonomy. Significantly, such harassment can lead to lower job satisfaction, lower skill development (especially in females), and can impact performance in school, absenteeism, tardiness and grades.Why the disparity between low and higher skill jobs? It should come as no surprise that victims of harassment are more often of “relatively low status and power in the workplace,” stated one of the professors. As with people victimized throughout society, they are more often the victims of this ‘power differential.'”
We also reported on May 5, 2013 of a $20 million jury award in a case of sexual harassment in Tampa, in which the plaintiff’s attorney said that “Sexual harassment against women is really an issue of power. It’s an issue of men in the workplace trying to exert their power over these women.”
Laura Gunderson, the author of these articles in The Oregonian, quotes the Oregon State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian as saying: “Sexual harassment is more about an imbalance of power than it is about sexual pursuit. … Young people are often more vulnerable. People want to assert authority or power over them – those with less experience – and they don’t know what resources are available to them to get help even if they want to report. Because of that, it’s much easier for an adult, especially ones with great supervisory power, to abuse them.”
Ms. Gunderson says that “These employees who are least likely to understand their rights when it comes to sexual harassment are more likely to be hurt long-term by the effects of such abuse. Young people who have been harassed report that their grades slipped and their interest in other jobs waned. At worse, some sink into depression or suffer post-traumatic stress.”
Read The Oregonian’s coverage of this issue. The latest article discusses sexual harassment of male teens; there’s a “persistent misconception” that sexual harassment involves only male-on-female conduct.