The food industry has been revealed as the worst place to work in terms of sexual harassment complaints.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – the federal agency that enforces workplace laws – have released data stretching back as far as 1995 detailing every claim of sexual abuse.
Of the 170,000 incidents the government handed over, 10,057 were made at what was described as ‘full-service restaurants’ – by far the most beleaguered workplace.
The food industry has been revealed as the worst place to work in terms of sexual harassment complaints (file image)
Full-service restaurant encompasses anything from fast-food restaurants to bars and food trucks, and the harassment claims relate to the past 20 years.
In schools, a total of 3,214 incidents were recorded across the US from colleges and universities to bus transportation put on by the education boards.
Women filed the bulk of the 170,000 complaints at 83 percent while men filed 15 percent.
Two percent of the complaints came from someone who did not specify a gender, according to BuzzFeed, who published the data.
Not all the claims fell into categories for the website’s data, with 64,000 of the complaints not specifying an industry.
In sampled surveys, people were asked whether they had experienced sexual harassment at work.
A quarter of respondents said they had, according to the EEOC study.
Astonishingly, that number soared to 40 percent when the question changed to whether or not they had experienced ‘unwelcome sexual based behaviors.
This encompassed anything from unwanted sexual attention to sexual coercion.
In the claims reported since 2010, the EEOC found half were found to have ‘no reasonable cause’ when the evidence was analysed.
Sahar Aziz, a law professor at Rutgers University who sat on the panel of the EEOC’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, told BuzzFeed: ‘It’s difficult because sexual harassment claims are allegations.
‘It’s a broad term and it’s not as clear-cut – there are subjective components.’
Of the 170,000 incidents the government handed over, 10,057 were made at what was described as ‘full-service restaurants’ – by far the most beleaguered workplace. Full-service restaurant encompasses anything from fast-food restaurants to bars and food trucks, and the harassment claims relate to the past 20 years. (file image of McDonald’s in Chicago)
Meg Bond, director for the Center for Women and Work at the University of Massachusetts, was also on the EEOC task force.
‘We should not trip over ourselves to define the difference between what is legally sexual harassment and what is problematic behavior,’ she said.
‘It’s about identifying where the more egregious types of harassment happen.’
It comes as Hollywood is still reeling from a slew of similar claims made against A-listers such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey.