Workplace Harassment Can Sometimes Go Both Ways

Des Moines, IAThere is no place in the workplace for workplace harassment. Ever since the advent of equal rights, women's rights and gender equality, what was once a novel (and at one time, accepted!) response to an increasing number of women working alongside men in the workplace, has quite properly become a stigma no longer tolerated in the workplace of 2010 and beyond.

That said, be careful what you wish for, as a female employee in a manufacturing plant in Des Moines, Iowa, found out. Alleged sexual harassment can go both ways.

According to the December 10 edition of the Denver Business Journal, Veronica Alvarez landed a job at Des Moines Bolt Supply Inc., sorting nuts and bolts. After working at the plant four years, Alvarez began to conclude that she was the target of sexual harassment in the workplace. A collection of co-workers are alleged to have been involved, and one in particular, whom Alvarez claimed to have insulted both Alvarez and her husband, among other allegations.

Alvarez, who eventually filed a sexual harassment lawsuit, also complained that the co-worker in question positioned himself near her, so that either he or she had to brush against the other's private parts. The court quoted some of the off-color jokes the plaintiff alleges he made, but they're too lewd to reprint, according to the Business Journal. The plaintiff is reported to have initially filed a complaint with the company in November 2005, with a follow-up complaint about two months later, in January 2006.

It is reported that the company launched an internal investigation and concluded that a hostile work environment did indeed exist for Alvarez, and that much of what Alvarez had alleged could be confirmed. However, during its investigation, the company also discovered, through other co-workers, that the harassment between the two primary antagonists was mutual.

As a result, the employer concluded that both the plaintiff and the primary antagonist violated company policy by engaging in mutual "verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature." Both employees were suspended for five days, after which the male employee was transferred.

Alvarez filed a workplace harassment lawsuit against the employer. In its decision, the Eighth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals cited the company's internal investigation as the defining moment in the case.

"An internal investigation, like a judicial proceeding, often produces conflicting evidence and requires judgments about credibility and the weight to be given various pieces of information. That an employer must choose among competing inferences does not mean that there inevitably is a genuine issue of fact concerning the employer's good faith," the Court said.

The Court also noted that Alvarez's suspension was not due to the fact that she complained, but due to alleged misconduct on her part that was substantiated by several co-workers. The Eighth Circuit Court held that the employer, on receipt of Alvarez's written complaint in January 2006, started an investigation promptly, and the Court was satisfied with the employer's response to the alleged workplace harassment case.