Harassment in the Workplace

[SunGlow]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

I've been working for my current employer for about seven months now. It's a food service privately owned franchise (so I guess it's not really a franchise). After about a month of working here I started to notice inappropriate behavior from the manager here. I don't mean to be racist or prejudice in any way, I'm just going to be specific about what exactly I have noticed... The manager is a Hispanic male and only hires other males. The only woman that works with this business is the owner. Neither the manager nor the owner are professional in the very least. The manager does all of the hiring and only hires Hispanic people to work in the kitchen. For the customer-service side, it seems he only hires Caucasian males between the ages of 18-25. He rarely interacts with the kitchen employees and demonstrates inappropriate behavior with the customer service-oriented employees. After about a month of working there he started touching me in ways that made me uncomfortable. He would come up behind me and start rubbing my shoulders, every time he walked by me he would poke me, bump in to me, grab my bicep and feel it. When I told him to stop, he would get upset and not talk to me for the rest of the shift.

I talked to my coworkers about what keeps happening and they said it happens a lot, he does very similar things to all of the other Caucasian customer-service employees that I work with as well.

I really don't know what to do. I can't tell the owner, because it doesn't seem like she knows what she is doing. I'm sure if I told her, she would just tell the manager and then I would get fired for making such accusations.

How do I go about dealing with this, especially since the offender is male and the victims are male as well..?

 

[cbg]

If the owner doesn't know what he is doing, that's exactly why you SHOULD tell her. So she'll know.

How many employees are there overall?

 

[SunGlow]

There are twelve employees.

 

[HomeGuru]

Send the owner written documentation. If the establishment is a franchise, send a letter to the franchisor.

 

[SunGlow]

Would it be beneficial to get a written statement from other employees that have seen or been affected by him?

 

[cbg]

Start by informing the owner. Don't get statements from other employees yet but notify her that other employees have had similar experiences.
,
Just so that there is no mistake, her only legal obligation is to make the illegal behavior stop. She is not obligated to fire the offending employee or schedule you to work when he is not there or separate the two of you. She is not obligated to tell you what action she is taking or make any discipline public. If you tell her what is going on and the illegal behavior stops, then she has met her obligation EVEN IF you don't see any action that she's taken. You don't have to know what she puts in his personnel file or says to him in private. All you need to know is that it stops.

If it doesn't stop, there are not enough employees for you to be under the EEOC but you have enough to file with the state equivalent.