While many claims of sexual harassment involve harassment by someone in a position of authority, the law also protects victims of sexual harassment by a co-worker.
If you believe that your co-worker is engaging in frequent, severe, and pervasive conduct that is physically threatening or humiliating, and it is interfering with your job performance, you should report it to your employer. If your employer does not take sufficient action to put measures in place to stop the co-worker’s offensive conduct, you may have a claim for sexual harassment based on a hostile work environment created by the co-worker.
The Hostile Work Environment
There are certain standards to meet for you to have a valid hostile work environment claim against a co-worker. When harassment is perpetrated by a co-worker as opposed to a supervisor or manager, the conduct complained of must be sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of the victim’s employment, and if the conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive, the employer must have failed to take adequate action to remedy the situation.
To determine whether the co-worker’s conduct is sufficiently severe and pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of employment, courts look at four factors:
(1) the frequency of the conduct;
(2) the severity of the conduct;
(3) whether the conduct was physically threatening or humiliating; and
(4) whether the conduct unreasonably interfered with the employee’s job performance.
Do Flirting and Isolated Incidents Create a Hostile Work Environment?
Simple teasing or mere flirtation, offhand comments, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) do not make up a valid claim of sexual harassment. The offensive conduct must be experienced regularly. For example, in one case reported in Florida, four isolated incidents of a co-worker brushing up against the other and making inappropriate gestures was not severe or pervasive because the isolated incidents took place within the span of two and a half years and the conduct did not affect the victim in her work.
Even if a victim can establish that a co-worker’s conduct was severe, pervasive, frequent, and unreasonably interfered with his or her work, a victim still needs to establish that the employer did not address the victim’s complaints. Once the victim reports the offensive conduct of the co-worker to the employer, the employer must take corrective action that is immediate, appropriate, and reasonably likely to stop the harassment. For example, an employer that confronts the co-worker using an escalating pattern of discipline, gives verbal warnings, and changes the two co-workers’ work schedules to avoid their contact satisfies an employer’s obligation to take reasonable steps to stop the harassment.
Are you the victim of inappropriate conduct by a co-worker that happens on a regular basis? Have you reported it to your employer? How did the employer respond? We can help you in figuring out whether you have a claim for sexual harassment perpetrated by co-worker. You should feel safe in calling us to listen to your story.