Every day in construction we focus on how to get to zero safety incidents. The pathway to zero safety incidents must include zero tolerance for discrimination and harassment. Tradesworkers who are women and people of color are often intentionally assigned unsafe tasks as a form of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation. This is not only wrong, it can lead to injuries that are devastating for the worker and expensive for the employer.
Several recent court cases illustrate how discrimination is a construction safety hazard. In EEOC v. Focus Plumbing (2021), the employer paid $500,000 to settle a sex harassment and retaliation case in which it reassigned two women who complained of sexual harassment to “undesirable or detrimental work assignments” involving heavy lifting with no help. One of those women suffered a stroke as a result of the difficult labor.
In EEOC v. Whiting-Turner Contracting Company (2021), the general contractor paid $1.2 million to settle a race harassment and retaliation case in which an all-black sub-crew was frequently given the most physically challenging and least-desirable jobs like working outdoors without shade while their white counterparts worked indoors.
These are not isolated incidents. I have interviewed dozens of tradesworkers across the country and several of them have told me they were intentionally placed in unsafe working conditions due to their race or gender or both. Below are just a few examples. Although everyone I interviewed gave me permission to use their name, I have changed their names to protect them from retaliation.
When Holly was a brand-new apprentice, the general foreman called her away from a task her journeyman had assigned her and told her to come with him. He pointed at the ceiling and told her to climb up a ladder and take out a 10-foot section of large-diameter, very heavy pipe by herself. She said, “I told him I didn’t think it was safe and he said, ‘Why can’t you do it? Is it because you are a girl?’ I told him I didn’t think it was safe and he said, ‘I don’t care, just do it’ and then he just walked away.” As she was completing the task, her journeyman came by and asked what she was doing and she explained. Her journeyman said, “Don’t you ever listen to him again. You’re going to get hurt.” Nevertheless, that general foreman continued intentionally putting her in jeopardy.
Whitney is a female of color who was instructed by her journeyman to roto-hammer backward on a ladder. When she went to the foreman to complain working that way wasn’t safe, she got laid off. Kendra is a female of color who was instructed by her journeyman to carry 26 large, heavy sheet metal panels up a ladder by herself. While she was in the middle of carrying an extremely heavy panel up the ladder, the same journeyman began yelling at her and ordering her to bring him something. Later, when she was on the roof, the journeyman began shaping a vent into something that looked like female genitalia, holding it in front of his pelvis, and asking her, “What does this look like?” while hitting it. “It was gross. I couldn’t walk away because we were working on this really steep roof.” The foreman witnessed the entire incident and didn’t do anything about it.
So what can you do as an employer to prevent these kinds of incidents?
- Your leadership needs to make it clear to every employee that you do not tolerate harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
- Train everyone who supervises others on how to not engage in harassment, discrimination, or retaliation themselves and how to stop it when it happens.
- Train every worker in your organization on what harassment, discrimination, and retaliation are, how to prevent them, and how to create a respectful workplace in which everyone is and feels safe.
- When workers report instances of harassment and discrimination, take them seriously, conduct a thorough investigation, and impose real consequences and remedial action.
- Make sure no one in your company retaliates against someone for making a report of harassment or discrimination.
