Sexual Harassment-Federal Policy: The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) defines sexual harassment as: Unwelcome sexual

advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individuals employment, unreasonably interferes with an individuals work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man. With sexual harassment: y The harasser can be the victims supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee. y The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct. y Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim. Sexual harassment takes one of two forms: quid pro quo, or hostile environment: Quid Pro Quo Harassment: The EEOC definition for Quid Pro Quo Harassment states that Quid Pro Quo sexual harassment exists when there are unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when (1)submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individuals employment, or (2)submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual. Hostile Work Environment Harassment: The other type of sexual harassment is hostile work environment harassment. The EEOC definition of this type of sexual harassment is that it exists when there are unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individuals work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.A hostile work environment is created where groups of employees sit around and tell sexual jokes or whistle at an employee as the employee works by. Courts require that the jokes, comments, etc. be severe and pervasive in order to substantiate this type of claim. Co-workers, managers or even consultants and clients who come onto an employers premises can create a hostile work environment. A manager who condoned this type of activity and engaged in it himself could certainly be held to have violated the companys sexual harassment policy as well as the law. In any sexual harassment action, whether it is quid pro quo or hostile work environment harassment, there is also the requirement that the harassment be unwelcome. Therefore, any employee alleging sexual harassment would have to prove that the sexual relations were unwelcome and not consensual. If they were consensual, any sexual harassment claims would probably not be successful. Employer Liability for Harassment: For quid pro quo harassment, employers are strictly liable that is, liable irrespective of fault. If the harassment occurred and met the legal definition, then the employer is liable for remedy. Employers are also automatically liable for hostile environment harassment by a "supervisor" someone with authority to hire, fire, or otherwise tangibly affect the working conditions of the harassed employee. But here, employers can avail themselves of an affirmative defense if they have taken reasonable care to prevent and correct harassment, and the victim has unreasonably failed to complain or otherwise to avoid harm caused by the harassment. However, if hostile environment harassment occurs at the hands of the owner, president, or alter ego of a company that is an employer, then strict liability that is, liability with no affirmative defense that can be proven and thus allow the employer to escape liability attaches, regardless of the nature of the harassment.Finally, when harassment is committed by a co-worker or even a third party, employers can be held liable, but only if they have been negligent in responding to harassment that they knew about, or should have known about.1 Sexual Favoritism: Could the other employees have a cause of action? When a male supervisor favors his girlfriend at work, all other employees are disadvantaged both male and female. That makes it hard for any of them to prove that their disadvantage is discriminatory on the basis of gender. If a woman says

she was disadvantaged by the boss's girlfriend's promotion, then the company or the boss can point to a male co-worker who was disadvantaged in the same way. And if both sexes suffer, some will conclude the harassment was not "because of sex" as Title VII requires. To prevail in a sexual favoritism case, the non-preferred employees would need to prove one of the following scenarios: y Implicit "quid pro quo":When employees understand that sexual submission is expected of them as a condition of job advancement; y Inequality of opportunity: When male employees claim they are deprived of the opportunity to get ahead because the boss was only interested in female lovers; y Widespread favoritism: If sexual favoritism is sufficiently widespread so as to transform the environment into a toxic one that revolves around sex, then both men and women may have a claim for sex discrimination. A Policy Guidance published by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1990 recognizes that Implicit quid pro quo and inequality of opportunity theories in the above case are valid. As to the third theory, the guidance states that isolated incidences of sexual favoritism, while clearly inappropriate, are not considered unlawful by the EEOC Plaintiffs cannot file a Title VII lawsuit unless they have filed a charge with the EEOC, the federal agency charged with implementing Title VII, within 180 days of the unlawful employment practice they are challenging. (Or 300 days, in states that enter a work-sharing agreement with the EEOC.) For claims of hostile work environment harassment, this period can be effectively extended if there is a related series of incidents, at least one of which occurs during the requisite period prior to the filing of an EEOC charge.