EEOC litigating many sexual harassment cases involving young workers at fast-food joints

Tallahassee Democrat reprints Kansas City Star article entitled “Fast-food industry serves up sexual harassment.”

“No other industry has as many complaints filed or cases moved forward into the court system, said Lynn Y. Bruner, district director of the EEOC’s St. Louis office.”

Typical victims are teen-age girls, often in their first jobs. In 2002, 18 such suits were filed or settled by EEOC (privately-brought cases must vastly exceed this number).

Retaliatory terminations are common features of such cases.

“[T]he fast-food industry is almost set up to have these problems. It is an industry with high turnover, so new managers have to be constantly retrained. Young people often supervise peers. The lines between horseplay, flirting and sexual harassment can get blurred when everyone is 18. And the number of fast-food chains means locations on every corner. Even franchises with solid corporate policies have trouble ensuring every manager at every location is vigilant.”

These factors are by no means unique to fast food. Many other businesses involve small, scattered locations and/or high turnover and/or youngish managers.

At a minimum, the uniform operational training of ground-level employees that is part of the requirements of a fast food franchising business provides an ideal opportunity to train employees about the company’s harassment policy and complaint procedure, a key part of prevention and defense of harassment claims. Years ago, as a 16-year old trainee at McDonald’s, I learned “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean,” and “mustard, ketchup, onion, pickle.” Today, “keep your hands to yourself” and “if anyone does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, call 1-800-HARASSD” should join the “basic training” lexicon.

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