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SALT LAKE CITY — Eighty percent of women and 43% of men have experienced some form of sexual harassment at work, and 70% of victims face retaliation after reporting harassment.
That's according to Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, and Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, who recently teamed up to pass additional safeguards against harassment for employees. Birkeland took an informal survey of her fellow female lawmakers, and heard from only two who had not experienced harassment at some point in their careers.
"It's not OK, and too often we think it's just us," Birkeland said during a press conference at the Capitol on Friday to celebrate the passage of HB55. "Too often, we think that we're going to be ignored or we're going to be told to just deal with it, grow up, be a big girl, handle it yourself. And so it continues and perpetuates, and we have to stand up and say it's not OK."
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from sexual harassment at work, but small businesses with fewer than 15 employees are exempted from the law. HB55 would extend those protections to small businesses in the state, raise the cap on settlements for sexual harassment cases and give employees up to three business days to withdraw from a settlement agreement on sexual misconduct that includes a nondisclosure agreement.
The bill — which passed the Legislature last week and awaits action from the governor — would also void certain nondisclosure agreements related to sexual harassment if they are required as a condition of employment.
"We have to have the state sometimes backing us up by saying, 'You can't tell a woman who's in desperate need of a job that she can't work there unless she signed something saying that if she's sexually harassed here in Utah, she has to keep it quiet as a condition to work," Birkeland said. "I can't even believe that that was on our books, that we were allowing that."
Weiler said the bill aims to stop serial harassers by allowing previous victims to testify about their experience even if they've signed a nondisclosure agreement, but only if they are issued a subpoena.
"We're trying to end serial abuse by safeguarding victims when responding to subpoenas against the same professional abusers," he said.
When asked if the bill will lead to a surge of new reports of sexual harassment, Birkeland said she hopes it will give victims a voice.
"I hope women and men who otherwise feel silenced do feel that they're empowered to speak up," she said. "I hope that they can come forward and tell people what's happened to them — not because I think that these individuals are going to be revengeful toward those employers — but because they want to protect new victims."
