Sexual harassment in the workplace

Like most of you, I have been thinking about the recent news headlines as the courageous women stand up and tell their stories of injustices placed upon their bodies and souls. Ensuring women are respected, supported, and afforded justice is vital. It is unacceptable that our current political culture reinforces an imbalanced power structure that allows men to abuse, take advantage of, and objectify the women who work beside them. It saddens me that our societal dynamics are such that they feel the safest place to tell their stories is to the media. As this critical conversation in our country moves forward it is important that we all seek to understand and address the barriers that prevent women from coming forward.

As our own organization is confronted with these same challenges, I am heartbroken to think that members of our staff may have not felt comfortable coming to me to share their truths. We have all been working to change the culture of the FDP to ensure we have a Party that is transparent and inclusive. We have made great strides in a short period of time and we still have a lot of work to do. Like every organization in our country right now, we have been assessing our personnel policies for the last few months. I recommend the following procedures be put in place immediately.

• Hire a neutral, third-party to interview all current and recent past state party staff to ensure concerns are voiced and proper changes are implemented quickly.
• Hire a Personnel Director to oversee staffing matters.
• Update our sexual harassment policy to make it more inclusive of all types of bullying and harassment.
• Ask Party leaders to sign a code of conduct on respectful treatment of each other and staff.
• Employ a neutral, third-party personnel committee for harassment reporting purposes.
• Provide a mediation process that allows victims to express themselves and seek proper remediation of offensive behavior.
• Hold a sensitivity, gender and inclusivity workshop at the 2018 DCCA conference for all Party leaders.
• Provide management training for our staff directors to cover proper HR and harassment procedures.

It is unfortunate that not everyone who has worked with Chairman Bittel has had the same experience I have. In my experience, Chairman Bittel has been refreshingly open to feedback, given by myself and others, about his conversational style and modified his approach when he learned that others found it off-putting. Chairman Bittel treated me as a full-partner and transferred real power to me quickly upon my hiring. His complete confidence and willingness to empower others is what has allowed us to make such great strides here in Florida in his short tenure. I will greatly miss his leadership and selfless dedication to our Party.

I am dismayed to hear people piling on and making this into a political fight or sensationalizing these women’s very tragic experiences instead of demanding justice and solutions to ensure no women has these stories to tell again. Men who have disrespected women, along with the trust and power that has been placed with them, SHOULD have consequences, however, there are very clear lines between sexual assault, sexual predation, and sexual harassment. The consequences should be clearly delineated as well.

Every workplace in Florida should have a safe place and process so their employees feel free to report all incidents of discrimination, harassment, unsettling behavior, retaliation, and most especially abuse. Here at the Florida Democratic Party we are taking the time to have the necessary and serious conversations that are required of each of us at this critical juncture in workplace history. I call on our fellow Floridians on both sides of the aisle, in every workplace, to do the same. It is past time that our business leaders and elected officials come together to ensure we have the proper legislation, protections and process in place that allows for true equality and justice in our workplaces. Women don’t report these things because they feel they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. We have a responsibility to change the workplace culture so women feel safe to speak up without fear of negatively affecting their careers.

We can do BETTER!