#MeToo at work
Sex harassment fight at work far from over despite steps forward
Sexual scandals have toppled CEOs, and corporations are trying to change their culture to protect people from harassment on the job.
“We certainly have moved into a new era.”
Tarana Burke Founder of the #MeToo movement
What has changed at work in the year since sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein turned the words “me” and “too” into an unforgettable hashtag and rallying cry for a generation?
A few examples: McDonald’s workers walked off the job in a demonstration aimed at fighting harassment in their restaurants. Powerful men, from celebrity chef Mario Batali to CBS CEO Les Moonves continue to be purged from positions for alleged predatory behavior. Laws have been passed in places like California and New York state aimed at training and awareness. Corporations have altered policies, including Microsoft’s move to allow
employees who previously had contracts with arbitration clauses to seek remedies in open court.
But there has also been a backlash: complaints that the movement has gone astray, putting men at risk of punishments that go too far; concern among human resources and other experts that women may have a harder time landing certain positions as some powerful men claim they are afraid to hold one-on-one meetings with female colleagues; women of color and those who earn low wages who have complained that the movement hasn’t adequately addressed their concerns.
And as the first wave of cases filed in the #MeToo era have their day in court, it remains to be seen if the many fighting such mistreatment far from the spotlight will ultimately get justice.
“I’m not seeing any easier path for women to get to legal remedies as a result of the #MeToo movement,” says Laura Noble, an attorney who works with the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and whose North Carolina-based firm had a 500 percent increase in calls about sexual harassment in the last three months of 2017.
“Some jury consultants will tell you that it’s negatively affecting harassment claimants because of this perception that the #MeToo movement’s gone too far,” Noble said.
Headline-grabbing moments
It has been a year since dozens of allegations against Weinstein exposed the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace and sparked a wrenching conversation about abuse and assault in the nation’s offices, factories and fields.
Since then, the headline-grabbing moments have included the firings of media and Hollywood heavyweights like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and Kevin Spacey. In September, CBS CEO Moonves resigned in the wake of several accusations of sexual misconduct, and comedian Bill Cosby was sent to state prison after being convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.
One of the most fraught flash points of the #MeToo period occurred last week, when Christine Blasey Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had been sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers.
“We certainly have moved into a new era,” says Tarana Burke, who created #MeToo more than a decade before it burst into the national consciousness and is considered the founder of the #MeToo movement.
“A moment doesn’t last for a year, and it doesn’t influence policy and pop culture,” Burke continued. “We will never not know about the depths of sexual violence, and we’ll never not have language to talk about our experience with sexual violence, because of #MeToo.”
#MeToo has reverberated in other ways. In January, Hollywood luminaries launched Time’s Up, an organization whose Legal Defense Fund has raised more than $22 million to assist men and women who’ve been sexually harassed or violated on the job. As of last week, it had received 3,557 requests for assistance.
And lawmakers from New York to California have green lit legislation that includes measures to make anti-harassment training mandatory.
But there has also been an adverse reaction, with critics contending that the movement has painted a spectrum of behavior, from a lewd joke to outright assault, with the same punitive brush. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in February and March revealed that 51 percent of Americans believe the increased focus on sexual harassment and assault has made it more difficult for men to know how to interact with women at work.
Others say that women of color and low-wage workers who are most susceptible to sexual harassment have been relegated to the sidelines, their stories largely ignored by media fixated on victims and perpetrators who are affluent, famous and white.
As of Sept. 11, 28 percent of women and 9 percent of men said they have been sexually harassed at work, according to a study exclusively shared with USA TODAY by Comparably.com, a workplace culture and compensation monitoring site.
In the wake of #MeToo, high-profile companies have lost leaders. In December, chef and TV star Mario Batali stepped down from his company and TV show after multiple women accused him of groping and harassing them.
Sneaker giant Nike also has experienced changes among its executives. Nike brand president, Trevor Edwards, and Nike’s vice president and general manager of global categories, Jayme Martin, resigned in March due to what company chairman and CEO Mark Parker said were “behavioral issues that are inconsistent with Nike’s values.” News reports at the time said that Edwards and Martin had protected male employees accused of belittling women and foreign-born staffers.
As a growing number of businesses begin to examine their policies, some major companies and industries have drawn attention to their attempts to prevent sexual abuses and make it easier to fight back when they occur.
In December, Microsoft said it was getting rid of the arbitration clause in sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases for the fewer than 1 percent of its 125,000 employees who had such provisions in their employment agreements. That same month, Facebook made its anti-sexual-harassment policy public.
And while the hotel industry had begun to take steps to combat harassment before the rise of #MeToo, in September, the American Hotel & Lodging Association and several major companies including Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt announced a pledge to ensure hotel workers throughout the U.S. have safety devices nearby to ward off sexual assault and other crimes by 2020.
“Every industry should be looking at themselves and asking, ‘What more can we do?’ ” says Katherine Lugar, AHLA’s president and CEO.
Businesses are in some ways moving at a faster clip than lawmakers, says Joan Fife, a labor and employment litigator and partner with the firm Winston & Strawn.
“I think that companies have responded much more quickly,” says Fife. “Going forward voluntarily, without waiting for the law to change, that’s how best practices are created.”
The next chapter
Advocates say more resources must be devoted to helping survivors, from psychological counseling to legal assistance.
Those encouraged to share their #MeToo experiences, Burke says, are “going to crisis hotlines, into churches, and those programs need resources.”
But however many roadblocks remain, advocates say, transformation remains possible. “I pray for a time when I’m telling these stories to my granddaughter and she’s rolling her eyes,” says Nina Shaw, a founding partner of Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein & Lezcano and Time’s Up founding member, “because I’m talking about something that is so absolutely foreign to her that she can’t imagine it.”