Mandated harassment training keeps town and village personnel informed

MILLERTON — In light of the heightened awareness of all forms of harassment present in today’s social climate, New York state has initiated new laws to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, one of which requires all state contractors to affirm that they have a sexual harassment policy in place and that they provide annual training to all of their employees. 

In response, local officials, employees and board and committee members from the town of North East and the village of Millerton assembled on Wednesday, April 17, for two separate harassment training sessions in the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex.

According to the official New York state website, the new laws contribute to Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2018 Women’s Agenda for New York: Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity. As of last October, all employers must now “adopt a sexual harassment prevention policy and training or use a similar policy and training that meets or exceeds the law’s minimum standards.” 

As another new law for combating sexual harassment, the Human Rights Law will now protect independent contractors from sexual harassment in the workplace. On Friday, April 12, Cuomo signed the 2019 New York State Budget into law, which included updating the state’s sexual harassment laws.

In the town of North East, town Supervisor George Kaye explained that while the town has organized harassment training sessions in the past, the sessions only covered individuals who were directly employed by the town. 

“I’m sure that the increased interest and emphasis on sexual harassment has probably been one of the reasons why they have mandated this,” Kaye said about the new training law.

For this year’s training sessions, the state has expanded its policies to cover all individuals who are considered employees. For individuals in the town of North East, this will now include North East Town Board members as well as individuals serving on committees such as the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee, the Conservation Advisory Council and the Ethics Committee. Yet even with the inclusion of more town personnel, Kaye said a question arose whether everyone needed to attend since many of the town positions are unpaid.

Nevertheless, the training sessions gathered a large crowd of town employees as well as village personnel and employees and volunteers from the NorthEast-Millerton Library. Totaling 36 people, the first session at 1:30 p.m. ushered in a packed house while the second session at 7 p.m. welcomed 17 attendees to the library annex. 

According to Kaye, the first training session was divided into two sections, including a 20-minute section for all employees and an 18-minute section that was designed for department heads, such as the Planning Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Assessor’s Office.

Under both training sessions, attendees reviewed two harassment training videos, “Unlawful Harassment Prevention” and “Unlawful Harassment Prevention: Supervisor’s Supplement,” followed by an interactive Q&A. At one point, Kaye and North East Councilman John Merwin fielded a question related to handling situations involving false allegations. In considering the question, they replied that in that kind of situation, a thorough investigation is needed. 

“It’s a difficult situation in how to handle it,” Kaye said later. “The only thing you can do is to do it to the best of your ability.”

In terms of what constitutes  harassment in today’s social climate, Kaye explained that “it could be anything.

“It could be something that is so shocking in its nature that anyone would be able to tell that is sexual harassment or it could be something that extends over a period of time that may appear minor in nature but that a person might find extremely troublesome,” he said.

Kaye said that harassment could be as simple as someone coming in and commenting on a person’s personal appearance over an extended period of time or even someone putting a hand on someone’s shoulder. He added that it was also a matter of how the harassment is perceived: while one person may perceive harassment, another might not.

As far as reporting harassment, attendees were advised to go to their supervisor immediately. In the event that the individual perceives harassment from a supervisor, they are advised to go to their Town Board members. However, if it’s the Town Board members involved in a potential case of harassment, individuals are advised to go to their human resources personnel to report it. In any case, Kaye said that once an individual has voiced a complaint, something must be done.

“It’s difficult for someone to go and say ‘I have this problem with such and such a person, but I don’t want to do anything about it,’” Kaye explained, “because the person he or she has spoken with is then under the obligation to forward that complaint.”

“Most people don’t come forward to talk about it,” said NorthEast-Millerton Library Director Rhiannon Leo-Jameson, “so it’s not an easy step for them to take and they should be treated with respect. I think it is a really hard topic, and even the video of it bounced around the issue to some degree… Short of physical acts of aggression and violence, there seems to be some middle ground where the intention might not have been there but it still makes someone uncomfortable.”

Given the state’s latest regulations for providing sexual harassment training to all employees, Leo-Jameson shared the library’s intention to train its volunteers and offer a sexual harassment policy. 

While the recent session was her first experience with training such as this, she suggested that the training could be improved by gravitating away from the use of stereotypes, such as identifying men as the main aggressors in instances of harassment.

“It’s always been an important thing,” Kaye said. “It’s not just today. However, it was not looked upon in the same light as it is today. I think everyone is now aware of it and the problems it can cause… These acts cannot go on in a work atmosphere.”