TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said the change will force
employers to take their responsibilities towards providing a
harassment-free working environment more seriously.
"There's no place in the modern workplace for office gropers and
lechers and bosses need to do more to stop those responsible for
bad behaviour from making working life unbearable for thousands of
women,” he said.
The definition of harassment
The Employment Equality (Sex Discrimination) Regulations 2005
amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to provide that a person
subjects a woman to harassment, including sexual harassment,
if:
“(a) on the ground of her sex, he engages in
unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect –
(i) of violating her dignity, or
(ii) of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating
or offensive environment for her,
(b) he engages in any form of unwanted
verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that has
the purpose or effect—
(i) of violating her dignity, or
(ii) of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating
or offensive environment for her, or
(c) on the ground of her rejection of or
submission to unwanted conduct of a kind mentioned in paragraph (a)
or (b), he treats her less favourably than he would treat her had
she not rejected, or submitted to, the conduct.”
Reaction
According to the TUC, the new Regulations mean that if, for
example, a colleague persists in making remarks about what nice
legs a female employee has, or her boss promises her promotion if
she goes away with him for the weekend, she should be able to claim
that this is sexual harassment.
But such conduct has amounted to sexual harassment for a long
time, according to Ben Doherty, an employment law specialist with
Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM. "These Regulations
simply codify what our courts have already established as sexual
harassment under existing legislation," he said. "This is not a
dramatic change to employment law in the UK."
The Regulations also mean that for the first time women who are
sexually harassed at work do not need to show that a man would have
been treated differently. In the past, a defence from some
employers was that there was no case to hear as the men in the
office were being subjected to the same behaviour.
