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Workplace Sexual Harassment And Legal Protections for Employees

The evolution of labour rights in Russia has changed in recent years in a few different ways. According to Lushnikov and Lushnikova (2015), the labour rights of an employee in the twenty-first century are ones that were shaped in both an industrial and a post-industrial society. Therefore, the "material" aspect of them received the most attention. Employees' property rights, such as the entitlement to salaries and compensation for material damages, were of the utmost importance and were adequately protected by law.

Scientists refer to the stage of social evolution that civilization has reached in the twenty-first century as "postindustrial society" or "information society." This transformation resulted in a shift in values, especially those governing labour relations, as well as a change in the means of production (knowledge becomes the primary resource). The gradual shift to a digital workflow poses a threat to the security of employee personal data in the age of computers, the Internet, and social networks, where employees' private lives can readily be made public. Even the possibility of a "digital concentration camp" is discussed by researchers.
  • A "digital aquarium," where all of the employee's information is readily available, allowing for pressure and manipulation. The shift in worker generations is also becoming a significant element. According to Kirillova, younger generations place less importance on pay in the workplace and place more emphasis on creative self-fulfillment, innovation, and self-search.
     
These data show that personal non-property labour rights are the direction of labour law evolution in the informational XXI century. For workers, a steady salary is insufficient; they want respect, consideration of their private interests, and psychological comfort at work. A person's conflict with an organisation can be fully avoided if the social and psychological requirements of workers are addressed, according to special research. These studies also point out that the decisive influence on productivity growth is not exerted by material variables, but rather primarily by psychological and social ones.

The right to equal treatment and protection from discrimination, the right to the protection of personal information and privacy, the right to complete and accurate information, and the right to the protection of honour, dignity, and professional reputation are all examples of labour rights, which have the individual as their core.

In addition, the current labour laws lack the institutions and legal mechanisms that would enable an employee to effectively defend their rights. An employee's dignity, honour, and privacy are also vulnerable to vertical bullying and harassment from management and horizontal bullying and harassment from coworkers in the absence of legal restrictions. The issue of sexual harassment at work is among the most hazardous. Employees are compelled to remain silent about such facts because of the intricacies of labour relations related to their dependent status.

Russian labour law has to be amended to include measures to protect employees from harassment, according to international legal standards and foreign experience in dealing with this issue.

Methodology
The sociological method was used to identify the detrimental effects of sexual harassment for public relations. The method of analysis and synthesis allowed us to consider various manifestations of harassment in contemporary conditions and, on the basis of this, formulate general conclusions and recommendations.

The analysis of the present international and Russian anti-harassment laws was done using the formal legal technique.

Result
In the European national laws that apply to relationships at work, the concept of "harassment" emerged rather late.

The 1996 revision of the European Social Charter contains one of the earliest mentions of harassment. The right of workers to uphold their dignity while working is established by Article 26 of the Constitution, which also requires states to take all necessary precautions to protect workers from harassment and other overtly hostile or offensive behaviour at work or in connection with their jobs. When the Russian Federation ratified this agreement, it did not assume any obligation to abide by Article 26.

Sexual harassment is defined as any form of unwanted verbal, nonverbal, or physical sexual conduct that aims at or results in an offence to a person's dignity, especially by creating a threatening, hostile, degrading, or offensive environment, by Directive 2006/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the implementation of the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment for men and women in employment and access to work on the 5 July 2006.

A special ILO Convention No. 190 "On the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work" (Beqiraj: 2019, pp. 1167-1176) was adopted in 2019. According to this convention, the term "violence and harassment" in the workplace refers to a number of unacceptable behaviours and practises, or the threat of such - whether it be a single or repeated incident - with the purpose, result, or potential consequence of inflicting physical, psychological, sexual,

In order to define sexual harassment, it is first necessary to specify the kind of behaviours that constitute it. The list of behaviours that fall under this category is also very long: they include unwanted hugs, kisses, touches, looks, jokes, screensavers or posters with sexual content, unwanted invitations to have sex or dates, obsessive questions about a worker's personal life or appearance, etc.

But these variants have the following characteristics:
  1. Such conduct is disrespectful to the victim's dignity and has sexual connotations.
    According to Sâmboan, it is "irrelevant whether or not the author has pursued a specific objective with the harassment, or whether or not the author understood the effect it has on the victim." The abuser does not intend to demote or otherwise drive the victim out of their current position in this regard. Such actions might also be motivated by other factors, such as vengeance, envy, cowardice, personal discontent, etc.

    It is crucial to place emphasis on the motivation behind such behaviour and its underlying reasons. The truth is that European directives currently define harassment as a form of discrimination. However, the motivation for such behaviour often stems from personal animosity, retaliation, wrath, etc. rather than a desire to oppress someone because of their gender, ethnicity, skin colour, or other characteristics.
     
  2. The goal of this behaviour is to foster a hostile environment.
    An employee is forced to work in a "hostile environment" if they are subjected to intimidation, mockery, or insults because of their gender or sexual orientation, according to the definition.

Discussion
Bethany Hastie notes that "tribunals and courts have come to understand the legal "test" for determining whether conduct is "unwelcome" as: "[T]aking into account all the circumstances, would a reasonable person know that the conduct in question was not welcomed by the complainant?" Bethany Hastie studied the practise of complaints of sexual harassment at the BC Human Rights Tribunal from 2010 to 2016.

Since the abuser "should have known" that their behaviour was unpleasant for the victim, it is not essential to prove that the bad behaviour was purposeful; a casual form of culpability is therefore very possible in certain situations.

The latency of this phenomena and the reluctance of victims to discuss such a phenomenon are related to the difficulty of creating legal defences against workplace harassment. In Russia, there are layers of modernisation and layers of traditional, even archaic, discourse about gender. Particular focus is placed on the archaic components, the interconnectedness of families, and sexual dynamics in the workplace. These things should be taken into account when protecting harassment victims.

Since the abuser "should have known" that their behaviour was unpleasant for the victim, it is not essential to prove that the bad behaviour was purposeful; a casual form of culpability is therefore very possible in certain situations.

The latency of this phenomena and the reluctance of victims to discuss such a phenomenon are related to the difficulty of creating legal defences against workplace harassment. In Russia, there are layers of modernisation and layers of traditional, even archaic, discourse about gender. Particular focus is placed on the archaic components, the interconnectedness of families, and sexual dynamics in the workplace. These things should be taken into account when protecting harassment victims.

We offer our recommendations for potential modifications to labour law that would safeguard employees from sexual harassment at work. The workers' physical and mental health should be protected by the labour protection institute. According to the World Labour Organisation, bullying and harassment are frequent issues that can seriously harm employees' mental health, and the loss of productivity brought on by depression and anxiety disorders costs the world economy $1 trillion a year.

Recognising that employees have a right to both physical and mental health puts the onus on the employer to ensure suitable working circumstances, which in the case of sexual harassment may entail taking precautions to avoid a hostile work environment.

Conclusion
One of the major risks in contemporary culture is sexual harassment at work, which puts people in an uncomfortable social setting and has a bad impact on their mental health. Undoubtedly, there have been latent facts of harassment in the past, but current social processes (most notably the #MeToo movement) and a shift in the way that workers' rights issues are viewed have brought these cases to light and necessitated the creation of effective response strategies. Labour legislation must adapt to the changing social interactions, having mechanisms that protect, among other things, the honour and dignity of workers, as patriarchal foundations and "family" labour ties will soon become obsolete.

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