Continued from
page one
Avoiding
Sexual Harassment Lawsuits
How
does the Construction Business Owner avoid
sexual harassment lawsuits? Sadly, there isn’t
any way to avoid a lawsuit if a person is intent upon suing
you,
whether
their reasons
are legitimate or not.
What you can do however is to shield
yourself and minimize the damage that you might experience
should you find
yourself on the nasty end of a legal suit.
According to
the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recently
Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc. agreed to
pay $206,000 to two female managers who claimed that
a male
company manager
had sexually harassed them.
Along with the money, the
settlement included an agreement by the restaurant chain
to implement new training
and monitoring procedures to prevent other such incidents.
The
lawsuit, filed in March 2003, alleged that Checkers corporate
management knew about the sexual harassment
but did nothing
to stop it.
Checkers stated that the company had reviewed
the allegations but did not find evidence of sexual harassment.
Checkers
said they entered into the settlement agreement because
it would
be less costly than the cost of going to court.
The
fact that the settlement includes the agreement, on the
part of
Checkers, to implement new training and
monitoring
suggests that maybe if Checkers had had other training
and
monitoring procedures in place, just maybe the corporate
management that originally reviewed the allegations would
have recognized
that indeed the two employees had been sexually harassed
and then acted accordingly, thereby possibly eliminating
the entire
legal tussle to begin with.
Next:
Businesses must comply with State Requirements
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