Teenage sexual harassments: Implementations after Settlements?
For the content corporate houses, it’s often easy to have a sexual harassment policy drafted: must be taking a few committee members. Easier to let it be taken for granted: with the workplace inequity in gender representation, or at most times, with professed hostile environment for women workers. And easiest to “escape” the charges of violations: because one, the onus of proving charges usually takes long enough, during which the company regains its public sympathies; and two, resolutions are usually “settlements”, a matter of parting with some redundant profits.
In either case, kudos to a young woman who as a teenager was harassed by her restaurant manager and others. As a former server at a Steak n Shake restaurant in St. Louis, Amanda Nichols, 17, was subjected to come-ons from an older male cook, who pulled on her apron, touched her and made sexually explicit remarks. 
Nichols also claimed the man followed her to the parking lot one night after work, threatened her and exposed himself. The manager did not heed to her complaints, and consequentially she was asked to leave her job.
But she went on to file a lawsuit against a company that has been running its business since more than 70 years now and operates 430 restaurants in 20 states of the country. Promptly, Steak n Shake then denied the allegations.
Good news is after four years of mental and two years of legal battles, she has been finally awarded settlement by Steak n Shake.
Steak n Shake has decided to settle the sex harassment suit by paying $180,000 to Nichols. It has also agreed to conduct sexual harassment training for management personnel. It has decided to redistribute its policies to young employees, and to post telephone numbers to report harassment.
The point is Steak n Shake, or other companies have policies in place. But what good are they without due implementation? Most hire employees on part-time basis and change employees quite so often. Almost 3 million youngsters ages 15 to 17 work during the school year, and like Nichols, about 4 million during the summer.
Do companies train the new employees vis-à-vis existing managers about workplace ethics? Or just not wake up until after they have to incur some expenses in settlements? The biggest ethical/legal question which still demands answer is to what extent the corporate houses be made responsible for having denied allegations for years (like Steak n Shake did) and finally just agreeing for settlements? Is it still amounting to “dismissing” teenage employees off the cuff?
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