Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Against The Kroger Grocery Store Chain

800 Words4 Pages

Sexual harassment is an adverse action in the workplace that may create a hostile, offensive, or intimidating work environment. Such adverse actions are considered unwelcome advances such as physical touching of sexual nature or a request for sexual favors. In this paper there will be a brief discussion over current sexual harassment issues that are associate with teens and young workers. In addition, I will briefly cover related statistics collected by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Following, I will discuss a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the Kroger grocery store chain. Furthermore, I will conclude with why it is important for companies to make sure that their employees are aware of the proper way to deal with sexual harassment claims …show more content…

This sexual harassment case was brought to court due to Kroger violating a federal law by failing to prevent the sexual harassment of a teenage employee over a period of several years. According to the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suit, the teenager was hired at the age of fifteen as a courtesy clerk and had experienced sexual comments from an older male co-worker that continued throughout her employment. She had made several complaints that lead to no outcome. Management did not take control of the harassment claims until the employee contacted the company’s hotline for support on this issue. In result, the former employee received monetary damages, the redistribution of Kroger’s’ sexual harassment policy to all employees at its North Little Rock location as well as additional management training on sexual harassment. The management training was required to include the how to deal with sexual harassment claims and the responsibilities of