Is it considered sexual harassment when a male coworker uses your work pc to view pornographic pics?
Question:
I have told our boss and they talked to him and he was supposed to “stop,” but hasn’t.
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7 Responses to Is it considered sexual harassment when a male coworker uses your work pc to view pornographic pics?
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Isn’t he in violation of some company policy about using company computers for personal use or for surfing to inappropriate sites? Do you have an employee manual? If so, look it up. Quote the page number and text and turn it into your boss again. If it doesn’t stop, go to HR.
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"Harassment", no. Harassment has to be actually directed at you.
What it very well could be though is ‘creating a hostile work environment’, which can be grounds for a successful suit against the employer.
I would speak to your boss again, and warn him that you consider his permitting the co-worker to continue to do this to constitute his allowing a hostile work environment to exist, and that if he doesn’t get it stopped you’ll contact the labor board.
Richard
yes, docuemented everything, you already spoke to the boss, then you are going through with company procedures to resolve this issue
There are two possiblities that I can think of that would make it sexual harrassment. 1) Is it possible for you to walk in and see this while he is doing it? If so I t could be said that you are afraid to come back to your computer whle he is there. 2) Is he saving any of this where you could accidently come accross it?
Is there a reason he needs to access your computer? I would tell your bosses that you are afraid to walk in and see him looking at porn. Once you do that, then it is on them to stop it. Laws on sexual harrassment say that if you make a complaint they have to investigate and if found to be true, they have to prevent it, Since he is leaving tracks on the computer, it’s pretty easy to be proven. As a supervisor I had to take classes on identifiing and prevently sexual harrassment
Use a password on your desktop and it won’t happen anymore.
It’s incredibly wrong yes, but sexual harassment?
I wouldn’t consider it that, if you want to get this coworker in trouble you can just bring up the fact that he’s looking up porn at work. No need to try to force a sexual harassment claim, although the way the world is lately…I guess they’d deem just about anything as sexual harassment…in which case I’d say maybe.
if you are sitting there and he is trying to make you look at them, then I would say yes, otherwise I would say it is just against company policy