Anette Sikka, Doctoral Candidate, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law Supervisor: Professor Katherine Lippel

 Human Rights Legislation ◦ Prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace – all jurisdictions ◦ Individual complaint to relevant Human Rights Commission ◦ Remedies e.g.: reinstatement, monetary compensation, letters of recommendation...  Workers’ Compensation Legislation ◦ Employer funded “insurance” program ◦ Individual complaint to Compensation board based on injury due to SH ◦ Varies by jurisdiction whether compensation available for injuries due to SH and under what circumstances ◦ Remedies: monetary compensation for time off work, rehabilitation, medical expenses,...

 Requires employers to institute measures to prevent hazards at work and penalties for non-compliance; Right for employees to refuse hazardous work  Different jurisdictions = different responses/remedies for different hazards  Actions by employee: immediate refusal to work, complaints to inspectors  Remedies for complaints: removal of hazard, reinstatement

 Only some jurisdictions contain protections against psychosocial hazards, some of those include SH – e.g. Saskatchewan  Ontario: ◦ Workplace violence: preventative measures and right to refuse work where worker believes workplace violence will endanger herself (physical) ◦ Harassment: Employer policy, measures for investigating complaints. No right to refuse work.

 Overall goal: to determine most appropriate legislative response to customer SH  Lit Review: medical literature, sociological literature, hospitality literature, legal  Interviews: to determine the ways in which female waitresses and bartenders perceive sexual harassment in relation to customers and the effect on their working conditions ◦ 12 semi structured interviews ◦ Participants: female, 20-40s, varying levels of service (all over 2 years in the industry), pubs/lounges

 Touching  Comments about specific sexual acts  Verbal: “Safety”: ◦ “When I felt threatened” ◦ “So I think that, there’s a line, there’s flirtatious, which is harmless, I mean, in most situations everyone’s safe, you’re making a decision to talk to people in a certain way. But then when it goes beyond that, that’s somebody else’s choice to behave that way” ◦ “I was never grabbed by customers and I... didn’t feel threatened”

 Categories of “difficult” behaviour: ◦ Derogatory, demanding, abusive ◦ Gendered derogatory statements ◦ Sexually explicit statements  Significant overlap in categorization

 “client” relationship: ◦ “I loved it when people walked in and said “oh you know I had an awful day” and then an hour later they were smiling and laughing... I loved it, so when I had to do all that work just to do the job that I wanted to do at the time, yeah it was just a bit onerous”  Tipping – added to creation of client relationship: “taking care of” clients ◦ No clear relationship between sexuality and tipping

 Initial response non-confrontational : ◦ “couldn’t be bothered” ◦ Joke, remove oneself, ignore, ◦ “Put them in their place”:  Rare for confrontational intervention– for any type of difficult behaviour ◦ Combined with overservice of alcohol  Response based on age, venue, management, familiarity with customer and management trust in their discretion (limitation – all participants over two years in industry, none for whom primary career)  Karasek job demands-control model?

 Ontario has mostly deferred to human rights legislation as appropriate forum  Current OHSL would allow for right to refuse if touched (physical) – legislation potentially not reflecting experiences of servers  Right to refuse more appropriate: ◦ Perception by harassed people of customer SH as workplace hazard (not discrimination) ◦ Autonomy increased with employee discretion to refuse ◦ Immediate removal from hazard ◦ Not significant impact on customer (not employment- related consequences) ◦ No evidence supporting “floodgates” argument

This project was supported by the award of a Scholarship for the Integration of Sex and Gender in Environmental and Occupational Health, provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Team in Gender, Environment and Health