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Dive brief:
- The US Department of Labor has published a new guide focusing on Combating harassment in construction.
- Issued by the DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the guidance is intended to help federal contractors understand the agency’s jurisdiction, clarify what constitutes harassment, and provide information to workers who may experience harassment. The OFCCP announced on November 21.
- The agency had planned to publish the guidance for several months as part of that of the White House National Gender Equity and Equality Strategya DOL spokesperson told Construction Dive. “OFCCP developed this guidance for employers and workers because harassment in construction continues to be a common problem,” the spokesperson said via email.
Diving knowledge:
The guide, which follows a question-and-answer format, comes in the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration, which has focused on narrowing down gender and race. discrimination at work, including construction.
In June, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued its own best practice guide to preventing harassment in construction. The agency conducted a year-long investigation that concluded construction stands out as an industry with “egregious incidents of harassment.”
The DOL’s guidance lists a number of examples of construction harassment. Specifically, it looks at commonly reported behavior in workplaces, such as passing off derogatory comments as a playful joke or dismissing hateful graffiti as harmless. The guide points to different actions, such as:
- Making unwanted comments related to a protected feature and disguising them as a joke.
- Display, in writing, derogatory comments related to a protected characteristic in a workplace.
- Not holding women’s restrooms to the same standards as men’s restrooms as part of creating a hostile or abusive work environment for women in the workplace.
- Criticizing a person’s participation in a job or industry because they feel they don’t belong because of their gender.
- Using racial slurs and slurs.
The guide also highlights the negative impacts of bullying on workplace safety.
“Harassment can also have a safety, health and economic impact on a work in general,” the guide states. “For example, because construction work is sometimes dangerous and requires the work of a team, bullying can endanger the well-being of more than the direct victim of the bullying.”
Best practices highlighted by the guide include educating employees about what constitutes harassment, communicating that it will not be tolerated, and developing formal procedures on how to report, investigate and take appropriate action on harassment.
To define your jurisdiction, the DOL’s guide refers to Executive Order 11246signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 to prohibit employment discrimination in federal contracts based on race, religion, or national origin. Johnson amended the order in 1967 to include sex and gender.
