labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Believe it or not, the liabilities that employers in Oregon face because of sexual harassment doesn’t stop there, and nor do the updates to the sexual harassment law in Oregon. Let me continue: the employer in the state of Oregon can also be liable if harassment occurs by a co-worker or an agent of the company, even if that person doesn’t have an authority position over the other worker.

In this scenario, the employer is liable again getting back to the old notion that the employer should have known that the sexual harassment was going on. So even though the co-worker or agent didn’t have any sort of employment related leverage over the other employee, it is still considerer sexual harassment if the employer singles them out, teases them, touches them, or threatens to touch them—and the employer should have known, or did know and didn’t do anything about it.

The only way out of this scenario for you employers is to find out about this sort of sexual harassment misconduct and take immediate and authorized steps to put a stop to the sexual harassment.

Here comes another believe it or not: employers can even be responsible and liable in court for harassment that takes place carried out by a non-employee. So even if this person doesn’t work for you, as long as the harassment takes place in your work site, and you should have known about it—or worse, knew about it and did nothing to stop it—then you are still liable. This is true when a supervisor or agent at the work site is considered your proxy, or representative. In that case of course, as your proxy, the supervisor should have stopped the sexual harassment if they knew about it, or found out about it if they didn’t know about it.

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