Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Mayor and Council Gets Tough On Sexual Harassment

Based on Mayor Sottile's recommendations the Common Council on Tuesday adopted an updated anti-harassment policy that includes unwanted sexual comments and actions as prohibited behavior by city employees.

The revised anti-harassment policy adopted on Tuesday prohibits:

* Abusing the dignity of an employee through insulting or degrading sexual remarks or conduct.

* Threats, demands or suggestions that the status of an employee is contingent upon their tolerance or acquiescence to sexual advances.

* Subtle pressure for sexual activities, requests for sexual acts or favors, and sexually oriented comments.

* Showing or displaying pornographic or sexually explicit object or pictures in the workplace.

The policy applies to all city employees, elected officials, boards and commissions and includes actions taken outside the work place such as "during business trips, business meetings and business-related social events."


Alderman Landi, raised a legitimate concern of whether or not this legislation would be able to be enforced. I think it's a legitimate concern, one way to insure the recommendations are enforced is to hire a person that specifically deals with it's enforcement, as Mayor Sottile has proposed.

It's clear Jimmy Sottile is not playing any games and I hope the council will continue to support his efforts. This is a good first step.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does it apply to alderman and alderwoman, the alderman at large and the Mayor?

Brittany Turner said...

Not playing games? It's far too little, far too late. This policy is a bare bones policy as far as sexual harassment is concerned, and should've been established years ago. Sottile is just trying to cover himself after his colossal blunder.

I wonder if something similar would apply to the Ulster County BOE and County Legislators. They seem to be exempt from a lot of ethical guidelines lately. :P

Anonymous said...

that is all the does, he plays games.

Anonymous said...

Get tough my ass. He allows Steve Gorsline and Mark Jackson to run wild. Gorsline and Jackson both don't even have to show up to be paid. If the mayor had done the right thing from the start the tax payers wouldn't be footing the bill for all the legal costs.

Anonymous said...

Jeremy, you pulled most of this post right off the Freeman website.
are you slipping? you used to lead the freeman around, now you just copy.
When you do copy, make a point to note that in the piece, otherwise you could be in trouble for plagiarism.

Anonymous said...

No one with any sense of a continued career would play games with this, because it involves actual money, city money, to defend the lawsuits.
You only prevent a lawsuit in the future by stopping the behavior. You only stop the behavior be redirecting thoughts. Can it be done? In theory, sure. In practice all these public works departments have mostly male employees who think and do things like this.
No "collossal blunder" exists on this on the part of the Mayor. The foolishness of calling this such is allied with calling some woman throwing a drink in his face because he supported a D.A. candidate other than this woman's husband a "colossal blunder." Get real.

Anonymous said...

Latest update on the fallout from the lawsuit. Both assistant superintendents are steppping down. Rumor has it Ed Boyle and Ed Sweeney are taking over the daily operations at DPW. Mike (the Road Warrior) Stoutenbugh will assume the position of labor foreman in charge of trash. Steve Gorsline will be moved to the engineers office. Do I dare say Kathy Thomas for superintendent. That leaves Mark Jackson as the only one left that has to be dealt with. With these changes his days of harrassing the workforce are all but over.