http://www.fcc.gov/owd/fcc_anti_harassment_statement.html (http://www.fcc.gov/owd/fcc_anti_harassment_statement.html)
FCC Policy Statement on the
Prevention and Elimination of
Harassment in the Workplace
Purpose
This policy updates the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC or the Commission) long-standing anti-harassment policy, which assures that the FCC is taking all feasible steps to prevent harassment from occurring and to address conduct that does occur before it becomes severe or pervasive.
Policy
The FCC has zero tolerance for harassment. It is the policy of the FCC to maintain a work environment that is free from harassment based on race, color, religion, sex (whether or not of a sexual nature and including same-gender harassment and gender identity harassment), national origin, age (40 and over), disability (mental or physical), and sexual orientation and from retaliatory harassment based on opposition to discrimination or participation in the discrimination complaint process.
In addition, it is the policy of the FCC that no retaliation will be tolerated against any employee for reporting harassment under this or any other policy or procedure, or for assisting in any inquiry about such a report.
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This is awesome!
My only reservation is that these regulations can easily be changed if the next administration doesn't agree with them. That's why it's still important to pass laws that protect our rights as gender nonconforming citizens.
I don't think ENDA is enough, we need to be specifically included under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
hugs & smiles
Emelye
It reads pretty similar to the anti-harassment policy of my former employer. But that didn't stop them from cutting my pay and eliminating my job when I returned from medical leave.
Policies like this are a great start but unless they are enforced they are meaningless. And a smart employer will figure a way to get around it if they want to badly enough.
Julie
Quote from: Emelye on January 30, 2009, 08:14:35 AM
I don't think ENDA is enough, we need to be specifically included under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act.
What's this about Americans with Disabilities? Would like to know what you mean there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990)
It would be a very bad idea. And policy does not ever equal practice.
Oh, so you mean you would want TG people to be included in Title VII in the same way that disabilitied people have been included into it by the Americans with Disabilities Act? For a second there I was thinking something kind of the other way around.
Quote from: Vesper on January 31, 2009, 03:26:51 PM
Oh, so you mean you would want TG people to be included in Title VII in the same way that disabilitied people have been included into it by the Americans with Disabilities Act? For a second there I was thinking something kind of the other way around.
Schroer v. Billington decided in Diane Schroer's favour because Judge James Robertson determined that TGs ARE included in Title VII. (http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/transgender/24969res20050602.html)
Quote from: Page 35 of the Decision, Schroer v. BillingtonImagine that an employee is fired because she converts from Christianity to Judaism. Imagine too that her employer testifies that he harbors no bias toward either Christians or Jews but only "converts." That would be a clear case of discrimination "because of religion." No court would take seriously the notion that "converts" are not covered by the statute. Discrimination "because of religion" easily encompasses discrimination because of a change of religion. But in cases where the plaintiff has changed her sex, and faces discrimination because of the decision to stop presenting as a man and to start appearing as a woman, courts have traditionally carved such persons out of the statute by concluding that "transsexuality" is unprotected by Title VII. In other words, courts have allowed their focus on the label "transsexual" to blind them to the statutory language itself.
=K
This is not always true and the results may be slow to show, but I have seen some policies of the sort the FCC has implemented have at least a levening effect on business cultures. They give some of the decent non-phobic people enough courage to steer clear of the culture bullies who do hate that they do not feel they must laugh and join in the shame to be safe themselves. This does not do much as I admit, but it may be enough to save one life one day. There are people who are constituted in such a way that they will always find ways around such policies and humane ideas, its the way life is, and I am sad about it. The fact that some people think that way for one day now gives me some hope they will find two days in the future.