WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced that the co-chairs of a select task force on the study of harassment in the workplace have called upon stakeholders to press harder when it comes to workplace harassment prevention efforts.
EEOC Commissioners Chai R. Feldblum and Victoria A Lipnic, the co-chairs of the task force, released a report they developed after studying workplace harassment for 14 months.
"In simplest terms, training must change," Lipnic said. "That does not mean we are suggesting that training be thrown out; far from it - but training needs to be part of a holistic, committed effort to combat harassment, focused on the specific culture and needs of a particular workplace."
It has been more than 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that harassment was a form of unlawful discrimination, yet harassment still happens way too often in the workplace, the EEOC reports. The report notes that roughly 90,000 charges were filed with EEOC in 2015.
"I thank Commissioners Feldbum and Lipnic and the members of the select task force for their work to combat the persistent problem of workplace harassment," EEOC Chair Jenny R. Yang said. "Preventing harassment from occurring in the first place is far preferable to remedying its consequences."