Top 10 Things Victims of Workplace Sexual Harassment and Violence Can Do

Think Progress: In what seems like a turning point for America, more and more public figures are being outed as serial harassers. But what does this look like in the workplaces with less public scrutiny where every day Americans are still experiencing harassment?

Unions were established to promote dignity, equality, and respect for all workers. As such, unions have an important role to play in creating safer, and more supportive and accountable workplaces. Unions are in a unique position: they have the power to influence how employers address harassment in workplaces where they have collective bargaining relationships or where they are organizing.

Odds are employees you work with have been victims of sexual harassment at some point in their work life. Here are 10 tangible ways to create a better, safer workplace.

If someone asked me #HowIWillChange when I first joined FUTURES and the movement to end gender-based violence, I would have responded “I don’t need to change. I’m a black and gay civil rights attorney. I know something about oppression and violence.”

Perpetrators of sexual harassment do not act in a vacuum. Harvey Weinstein certainly did not commit his decades of sexual harassment in covert isolation. It was an “open secret” for many in and outside of the industry.

Like clockwork, as one workplace sexual harassment scandal fades from the news, another story emerges to take its place. The contours are generally the same: a powerful man, whether it’s at Uber, at Fox News or in Hollywood, sexually harasses his colleagues for decades and faces no real repercussions until his behavior makes the headlines.

National Resource Center Relaunched on 23rd Anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act

We are proud to work with a coalition of anti-violence advocates, union leaders, worker advocates and women worker leaders—the Ya Basta! Coalition—to advance the workplace safety and dignity of women and other workers vulnerable to experiencing sexual violence and harassment in the janitorial industry, and improve conditions for all workers.