hello and welcome to this edition of represent n y c and the manhattan neighborhood network i'm council member helen rosenthal representing the upper west side in the new york city council and i chair the council's committee on women today we'll be talking about sexual harassment in the workplace what this city is doing to combat it and what more needs to be done earlier this month plus hero signed the city council's stop sexual harassment in n y c act into law the protections in this act are by far the broadest the most far reaching in the country for the first time all workers both in the private and public sectors in workplaces big and small are protected against sexual harassment by the city's human rights law contract and freelance workers are protected to every workplace will have to provide training on what sexual harassment is and what to do if you have experienced or witnessed it we are also requiring real accountability for city workers this includes annual reporting from every city agency an anonymous surveys of every one of the city's three hundred and thirty thousand plus workers but let's be real no piece of legislation alone can fully address systemic issues like patriarchy massage and sexism and so we're already thinking about next steps i'm very pleased to be joined by allegro official executive director of the gender equality law center and marie s start with really for both of you but rita if you could start in your years of working with community based organizations what do you hear about sexual harassment in the workplace i mean the work that we do in the cd with community and labor we also seen that many workers have been frayed or stepping up doesn't matter if you're a woman and made a transgender person across the spectrum of gender we see that when you are in  workplace and you are the pending on a pay you don't want to actually speak up because you might lose your jobs so retaliation is something that we've seen you see that a lot in the restaurant industry in the retail industry and you know it's something that has become even common in many places so when you new folks are organizing and they have their laws in paper they always ask like if they work when to come forward you know what i like about what you're saying is you're giving specific igs examples of specific industries and how we might need to have industry focused legislation you know when you talk about restaurants my understanding is the concern is the key in the kitchen who are sexually harassing the waitresses that's how it occurs you know for construction women in the construction field they get a little bit of a different way but you get it also from the customers you know i know a person actually recently shared the story she was really afraid of speaking up because not only her boss was social harassing her but also  well as a legal organization that represents clients in such cases we use we are receiving a lot of calls but they are the same types of calls that we were receiving before the new laws the me too in the times up movements they tend to be workers who are not a are not coming forward complain about sexual harassment against somebody who's high profile like a powerful politician or a hollywood mogul they tend to work in similar industries restaurant business jonna tauriel manufacturing personally employees that are very disempowered and don't really garner media attention so that's kind of consistent we're not really seeing that much of a change what i am seeing is that women are calling us who now realize they were sexually harassed maybe as much as ten years ago and we unfortunately have to tell them that there is no legal way dress because of the statute of limitations and that's a great point one of our laws changed the statute to limit patients for the new york city human rights law so that perhaps you could use you know the new york city human rights as opposed to a state or federal one but only to three years from one to three years but in terms of filing with the agency where many people who are pro bono meaning they don't have a lawyer go to file that's a huge amount of time one to three years so that's a tremendous and have you seen an uptick over time like in the last five years have the last one and a half years been particularly busy i would say  definitely an uptick of claims because i think more women and other people who are victimized in the workplace are hearing media stories or saying hey maybe i was sexually harassed or identifying with it  but it's not as you just you might think i've been representing victims of sexual harassment pretty consistently for two decades and many of the same people who were being harassed are still being harassed but then of course women have the benefit yet of some of the changes under the city law well that's exactly right so over the next year the new laws will go into effect yes so for example by two thousand i think mid two thousand eighteen  all even private sector employers will be required to publicly post the city's anti harassment provisions and they will be required to provide workers we've been management and ensure their employees and their stand that they are protected under the law and that they should come forward and actually reward that rather than retaliate that and i think you say again i feel like the idea of shifting the systematic changes that we need to be doing the cd i think those are the important pieces because again a piece of paper alicia's the nation as you say earlier not going to change is not going to change the way people behave so what it sure that community folks who might know know english are able to understand the law right how are we expanding the training in different languages the bending of the locations in the places where people work you know which industries are traditionally more of  is required to do it and i know that it should be some penalties connected to a zero because that's the only way they will respond and that will help with the shifting of the culture the issue of penalties i think is one where i'm not sure we were able to sink our teeth in that well that could be something we need to do next and enforcement in general it's not like we wrote into the law that there's going to be a city employee now who goes around to every workplace and make sure they're complying instead this will all be complaint driven so we're going to have to educate everyone to you know let us know if it's not happening how do you think these laws are going to work how are they held well i think there really are tremendous advancement i mean i think we still have to see how they are enforced on the agree with everything that  about they have to be accessible to people in terms of language i'll tell you the truth i'm not entirely thrilled that the requirement is that they just get to a computer program essentially the interactive training can be done online i am a strong believer that more effective training would be if they had to in person where workers sit together and talk about sexual harassment online makes me think you can go into your office and close the door and how do we even know i mean can you just set the button and then go out and do something else so enforcement because talking about behavior you're talking about personal interactions those you know people understand you shouldn't do something but they don't always understand why  differently so that's something that i think is really important i also agree with you marie is there has to be a penalty for not doing it i mean one way would be to read into the long terms of forcing the law that employers don't do it that could be one type of evidence to prove that it is a discriminatory work environment would take a little bit of drafting to deal with that but i think overall to have such for us in training is a tremendous advancement having a poster just like you you know that you get to be paid minimum wage it's right out there on the board just like you know you can apply for workers comp it becomes normalized and that this is part of the code that the way the culture should be and i think that's huge so i think that even i think that was majority leader combos bill and yeah that was just terrific you know i'm pretty sure i don't think it was written into the law but i'm pretty sure that the commission on human rights has the intention for the trading to be interactive in the sense that at certain places through it you will have to interact you know it requires a response from the person but there's you know there's no question that they in person trainings are better and the commission on human rights actually said that if any private employer calls them that they would be happy to go out and do impersonal training they do that now hopefully they'll get called upon more to do it what we're always juggling is you know for these smaller workplaces that we want to keep in business we're doing all the right things minimum wage must be plate paid you know we have paid sick days now family leave all of these things are true rick and i think owners want to do it at some point for some owners they need a little help and maybe the line version will you know be satisfactory for those firms employment for businesses but if a worker came forward to the human rights commission and said you know we're getting the sexual harassment training snow difference that will be valuable the commission will pursue that case because that something i feel like it's also very critical to think about the stakeholders  particular very proud to see so many women taking on those jobs and so how do we ensure that woman in the construction industry continue doing those jobs without being sexually harassed i'm not saying that that is happening all the time but i think there's also affiliate are very much in support of figured out ways to pay so poor any hands the woman in the industry so how do we ensure that happens will be very critical that's a great point and you naive already reached out to a couple of unions  and i found the building trades to be very receptive and also retail workers that that union is very excited to help get the work word out to their employees so you're right the partnerships there are going to be critical and it's going to be critical that the commission on human rights has trainings that are specific to specific industries yeah that's a great point you know  i mentioned majority leader combo one of her bills but you know there were eleven different bills but they were championed by the speaker cory johnson he's new in his term this is priorities are and you know i've told them this and leslie but you know it's a real statement about how serious the city is in addressing these issues so i think that's exciting  alegria given that we're fighting the larger issue of gender equality do you think these bills fit into that picture that they you know how do they fit in  here i'm thinking more about sort of the spectrum of harassment that happens to women you know you could sort of say harassment you workplace harassment escalating up to more physical abuse so for us men are gender based harassment i just want to pause to say that the law a broader spectrum of it's not just women victims certainly women victims are probably the majority and those are mostly the people we hear about but it also covers men and it covers people who are in one or more of the l g b t q communities who have historically been harassed on the basis of gender and there are some statistics that say as many as forty percent of people in one or more of those communities harassed in the workplace it out given time so i just want to give a shout out to the laws that they cover a broader spectrum that it's not doesn't have to be sexual conduct it can be gender based conduct but i think the biggest thing is that sexual harassment or gender based harassment is probably one of the most pernicious forms of gender discrimination because it decides for the horrible experience that someone experience it often leads to them being pushed out of their job they either leave because the situations intolerable or they begin to take a lot of time off they have absences they don't know how to deal with the situation they're fired for absenteeism or not surprisingly their work to tyria it's because they feel so stressed out on the job and of course losing your job and not being able to support yourself or your family is probably the biggest issue of you know in equity in terms of gender right why people are afraid to come forward exam you know i spoke this morning at a an event of a couple hundred people in the room and afterwards this woman probably in her mid seventy's came up to me and told me the most her reflects story of what had happened to her in the private sector and of course she got no help whatsoever left her job and  know had tears in her eyes when she was thinking me for these spells because you know there's hope that may be the next generation for the next gen ration of women they won't be pushed out of their jobs for these reasons if we brainstorm just a little bit and think about next steps where do you think we need to go to strengthen these laws to make it even easier for women to come forward i think it also may be important to think about companies places where there is a public funding that's been given worker but it is interesting because their restaurant workers face this kind of thing and workers who are in the industry base are right are they actually have to take on the harassment whichever kind of harassment my look like to get their tips to be able to get the zation and others are making that don't necessarily sound like a gender harassment gender based equality issue but really they have that impact as well so changing tipped workers over to salary workers that would make all the difference and the other thing i think would be important because who we are here in new york if you we need to  hard on many of our people yeah again you're sort of another lane of issues but it comes back to this as well i was speaking with the  officer who the commanding officer of the hate crimes unit to this point about number forty five and if you look at hate crimes the bump up is you know three months before his election to other bills that we're looking to develop will help protect individuals reporting harassment from retaliation we want to require a real butterball presumption of harassment another words the alleged abuser will have to prove that that person did not harass the survivor does that make sense in and would that be helpful so in other words  you know it's not that the survivor has say no he really did it sorry i went back to gender pronouns i ok that person really did harass me instead of that the alleged harasser w have to prove that they did not do it that there's a robot a bull presumption that they did i think that might be hard to pass i'm not sure that the law would would entertain that but i think that often sexual harassment cases are not that hard to set up right the language is often much more explicit the conduct is much more offensive than in other areas of discrimination i think it really has to do with courts and administrative bodies believe in the back kind of conduct is really sexual harassment and i think that's going to be more of a culture shock for the courts this well for the courts as well one of the things i love about the new law is that it has things that will help the culture shift for the employer because there have been terrific laws on the books for decades the new york city human rights law has been on the books for decades it's one of the most in terms of lawyers one of the most progressive laws in the country bar none but nonetheless women and men and l g b t q individuals don't come forward because of what you were saying there's a lot of fear there shame there's fear of reprisal there's all kinds of other factors and that's why i think to really make a dent in terms of prohibiting sexual harassment there has to be a culture shift the onus can not be on someone coming forward that it's just created a culture of silence and shame so that's why having training i notice part of the training requires bystander intervention having like a zero tolerance training supervisors and managers that if they see it they've got to stop it it's not the it's not the person experiencing it who may feel so disenfranchised they can't come forward and so that's what i really see as the next kind of stage of the valving both in terms of our society and our laws that the fighting we agree with you one percent hundred sent by we i mean my legislative team as we've been thinking about it but that's really helpful to hear you can imagine having a poster right next to the poster that says here's what to do if somebody chokes having a poster right there saying what to do if you're sexually harassed see one thing and then seeing another and that opening up their eyes which is really exciting important because i can tell you that it's really amazing so many times women will come to me and say i didn't get i'm short on my pay or they didn't pay or benefit or they mark me absent and i wasn't and then march right into h r and complain but if they're being sexually harassed they feel too shameful to come forward because of just the feeling they're not going to believe so normalize their culture that says you march right in there the same way as if you think you're for and you're a would be really like revolutionary which by the way that's on the spectrum as well intentionally  paying one gender something different than the other right there and i know i certainly have a story about that you know many women do so and a lycra thank you so much for your time thank you for sharing your experience and your knowledge about this incredibly important issue maybe we'll do this again a year from now and check in to see how we're doing so i want to thank all the viewers out there too for watching represent