Mission impossible? ILO aims to end harassment at work

This article was written by Kirthi Jayakumar, author and founder of the Red Elephant Foundation, an Indian women’s rights NGO. For more like this, see our gender equality newsfeed

The International Labour Organization recently adopted what has been heralded as a historic convention, addressing the reduction of violence and harassment in the workplace with an overwhelming majority.

The Violence and Harassment Convention 2019 and the Violence and Harassment Recommendations  2019 were adopted on the last day of the Centenary International Labour Conference, in Geneva. The Convention recognizes that violence and harassment in the world of work “can constitute a human rights violation or abuse…is a threat to equal opportunities, is unacceptable and incompatible with decent work.” It defines “violence and harassment” as behaviours, practices or threats “that aim at, result in, or are likely to result in physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm.” It reminds member States that they have a responsibility to promote a “general environment of zero tolerance”.

Adopted with an overwhelming majority of 439 to 7 with 30 abstentions, the resolution came into force four years after the discussions around it were initiated.

According to the ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, the #MeToo movement had lent the discussions “momentum and significance” to adopt the convention.

A pioneering effort to end harassment

The convention is a first at the global level to address violence and harassment at work.

It aims at protecting workers from harassment in places where they are paid or resting, eating, or using sanitary facilities, regardless of their contractual status — thus including those whose employment has been terminated and job seekers.

It covers work-related trips and commutes, training programs, social activities, and communications. It addresses workers from the public and the private sectors and the unorganized sector (informal economy) as well.

The convention also accounts for violence and harassment involving clients, customers, service providers, and other third parties.

Per the convention, governments that opt to ratify will be required to come up with national legislative measures to prohibit workplace violence, engage in preventive measures, and draft workplace policies to address violence in the workplace.

Governments will be mandated to monitor the prevalence of workplace harassment and provide access to remedies through complaint mechanisms, provide witness protection measures and victim support services, while also prioritizing protection for victims and whistleblowers from retaliatory reprisals.

Direct and hidden violence

The text of the convention defines violence and harassment as “a range of unacceptable behaviors and practices, or threats thereof, whether a single occurrence or repeated, that aim at, result in, or are likely to result in physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm, and includes gender-based violence and harassment.”

Within this definitive scope, one can see that the convention specifically targets direct violence, or violence that is manifest and overt. Johan Galtung’s (1969) famous triangle explains that direct violence is a manifestation of the underlying structural and cultural violence that remain hidden.

Workplace violence and sexual harassment that is overt is largely a product of power structures and involve power play.

Both hostile environment harassment (harassment without any reciprocal “benefits and favours”) and quid pro quo harassment (providing “benefits” or “favours” in return for sexual favours) are a product of a person in power manipulating their position of power to take advantage of an employee / worker’s vulnerabilities or lack of power.

The convention’s explicit reference to behaviours, practices, and threats speaks exclusively to the symptom and not the structures that need to be addressed at its very foundation.

Workplaces of all kinds are traditionally spaces that are dominated by cis-heterosexual men, and almost all other gender identities have been excluded systemically.

As SOAS-professor Dianne Otto argues, “In the absence of change in the broader social hierarchies of gender, women need to cross to the ‘male’ side of gendered traditions if they are to be taken seriously in traditionally male spheres.”

What Otto suggests as true of women is just as true for all non-cis-het male identities accessing workplaces. To overcome these barriers, the key is to focus on dismantling dismantles structural violence to achieve “substantive equality,” or equality that is dedicated to providing equitable outcomes and equal opportunities for disadvantaged and marginalized people and groups.

According to the convention, while the ILO will prioritise an “integrated, inclusive, and gender-responsive approach for the prevention and elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work,” it appears to be another document among many that appear to have dispensed with the focus of feminist engagement for substantive equality, in favour of the institutionalization.

Strategic Essentialism over Inclusive Engagement

Article 6 of the Convention says, “Each Member shall adopt laws, regulations and policies ensuring the right to equality and non-discrimination in employment and occupation, including for women workers, as well as for workers and other persons belonging to one or more vulnerable groups or groups in situations of vulnerability that are disproportionately affected by violence and harassment in the world of work.”

Though the convention appears to leave room for a wide interpretation of who a worker is within the scope of the text, the generic and loose terminology begs the question as to whose interests are served  by the vague formulations and the scope of the text.

[Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak explained](https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JEjsQbxIOC0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=Spivak+(1988&ots=sBmHPU8kfi&sig=5I4D62DE9zyqZkeWeso9-zRfR4c&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Spivak%20(1988&f=false) how minority groups, nationalities, or ethnic groups mobilize on the basis of shared gendered, cultural, or political identity to represent themselves towards attaining a particular target, and called it “strategic essentialism.”  In coming together, they transcend individual differences to pursue a common agenda for change.

However, as Aroussi (2017) explained, even as strategic essentialism can help assert group rights or may succeed in attaining a particular goal, it can also “represent a slippery slope that limits what can be achieved,” in this case, by this convention.

The convention does not, however, address the harassment and violence against LGBTQIA+ people.

In response to a question pointing out this omission, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder acknowledged that LGBTQIA+ issues were “controversial” but said that "The spirit of the Convention (...) is that everybody falls under the protection of this Convention."

From Guy Ryder’s statement, it appears that there were “contentious negotiations on the convention” in the run up to its adoption, and that defining the scope of “vulnerable groups” was a “major stumbling block.”

This only confirms the suspicion that approaches to push for the convention were couched in strategic essentialism, and not in actual inclusive agendas that acknowledge the variations in gender experiences on account of multiple other identities.

The imprecise language leaves room for interpretations  that can be adjusted to suit national agendas. Because the implementation of the convention  is left to national governments, the wording of the text allows states to interpret the legal framework according to their own preferences.

This means that countries that discriminate against minorities and violate basic human rights standards will use this convention as an occasion to codify this discrimnation in the nation’s laws and regulations. .

A wasted opportunity?

The ILO’s attempt at this convention comes closely at the heels of recognizing the gaps in extant national legal regimes addressing workplace violence and harassment. Any attempt at legislation for workplace harassment must acknowledge the forms of structural and cultural violence that cause it.

Admittedly, it cannot be discounted that this convention is a path-breaking development in shaking up the silence around workplace harassment at the global level.

However, the true success of this convention lies not in its creation and adoption today — but will be achieved only if the agenda it professes is furthered with a dedicated pursuit of dismantling structures and cultural factors that enable workplace harassment.  — Kirthi Jayakumar

(Picture credit: Habeebee/Flickr)