Sexual harassment panels mulled versus online abuse

A member of the House of Representatives has urged colleges and universities to consider forming committees for victims of sexual harassment in light of a recent incident wherein a 26-year-old victim accused a college dean of taking photos of her while she was asleep naked, and then posting them on a fictitious Facebook account. House deputy majority leader Roman Romulo said that colleges and universities should consider installing committees on decorum and investigation to provide immediate relief to students who are possible victims of sexual harassment. “It is crucially important for students or even teachers who may be victims of sexual harassment to be aware that there is actually a trusted school panel they can run to, ready to receive their complaints, which will be treated with utmost discretion," said Romulo, a lawyer by profession. “In fact, the mere formation of the committee will go a long way in discouraging potential sexual harassment cases in the school setting," said Romulo, who represents the lone district of Pasig City in Congress. Romulo was responding to recent highly publicized reports of sexual harassment cases in at least two private higher institutions of learning, where the victims were female students and the alleged culprits were male instructors. Last week, a 23-year-old student at the University of Manila accused her 30-year-old professor of drugging and molesting her inside her apartment. This was after professor allegedly insisted on seeing and having drinks with the student so she could sort out her unexplained absences from class. The other week, a student at St. Jude College in Manila accused the dean of hotel and restaurant management of forcing her to sleep with him in exchange for passing grades. The 26-year-old victim also alleged that the dean, 42 years old and married, took snapshots of her while she was asleep naked, and then posted the photos on a fictitious Facebook account. Another colleague, meanwhile, welcomed the government’s move to repeal a Labor Code provision that bans women from “graveyard shift" work as this is no longer relevant, especially in the call center industry. Rep. Arnel Ty, president of the party-list group LPG Marketers’ Association (LPG/MA), said in a statement that the legal prohibition against women in night work has become totally obsolete, irrelevant, and inapplicable. “It has been rendered outmoded by the modern times," he said. “We definitely favor the lifting of the ban with respect to women employed in the office setting." “However, women should still be discouraged from night work when it comes to potentially perilous industrial activities such as mining and quarrying, construction, iron and steel manufacturing, logging and timberworks, and fishing, among others," Ty said. Malacañang has included a measure seeking to repeal Article 130 of the Labor Code in the list of 23 high-priority bills submitted to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council earlier this week. Article 130 states that: “No woman, regardless of age, shall be employed or permitted to work with or without compensation in any industrial undertaking between 10pm and 6am the following day, or in any commercial or non-industrial undertaking, other than agricultural, between midnight and 6am the following day." The exemptions to the prohibition include emergencies due to disasters and imminent dangers to public safety, essential health and welfare services and urgent work to be performed on machinery or equipment to avoid serious business loss. The exceptions also include cases where female employees are immediate members of the family running the establishment, or under certain cases exempted by the Secretary of Labor. While the ban has been effectively overtaken by the rapidly changing times, Ty said it nonetheless poses an administrative problem to many employers. Ty cited the case of highly labor-intensive contact centers and other business processing outsourcing (BPO) providers that directly employ mostly college-educated women. “Women account for up to 70 percent of the staff of these firms, who have to cope with the night work prohibition through the tedious process of seeking an exemption from the Secretary of Labor," he said. The country’s booming BPO industry, which provides information technology-enabled services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, has been pushing for the repeal of Article 130. — Newsbytes.ph