Sexual Harassment in Restaurant Industry

Sexual harassment lawsuits against another employee are not uncommon, but oftentimes employers overlook harassment of their own employees by customers. A 2014 Restaurant Opportunities Center United report about sexual harassment found that 78% of restaurant workers had been harassed at one time by a customer. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires employers to provide a workplace free of harassment. If the employer “knew, or should have known about the harassment and failed to take prompt and appropriate corrective action,” they can be held liable. Many guests don’t expect that their behavior will be questioned; many restaurants don’t want to make customers uncomfortable by correcting their behavior. So what is a restaurant to do when a customer harasses the staff? The first step for restaurants to fix this problem is to have a strong HR department that is serious about preventing and dealing with sexual harassment. It’s clear when employers are using training as a pre-emptive legal defense and when they actually take it seriously. Employees will respond with equal seriousness. If workers don’t feel like policies against harassment will be enforced, they won’t report. Another step that restaurants can take to prevent lawsuits is proper sexual harassment training. All restaurants need sexual harassment training, not just big ones with HR departments. There needs to be something written down somewhere that’s clearly visible — if this happens, this is how we will respond. In other words, employers can’t just say that all their employees deserve respect; they have to go out of their way to show that they won’t tolerate sexual harassment if there is to be any meaningful change. See also: Sexual Harassment: Just the Start   The final way to mitigate sexual harassment lawsuits is through employment practices liability Insurance. Some restaurants consider going without EPLI coverage. Others mistakenly assume they are covered under their general liability policies, which most often have a standard exclusion for employment practices liability exposures. Going without EPLI can be a costly decision. Even if a restaurant only has a few employees, it needs EPLI coverage. You can find the full report here.