Researchers at Thompson Rivers University and the Kamloops Sexual Assault Counselling Centre (KSACC) have partnered up in a research project to try to understand why sexual harassment persists in the restaurant industry.
Through surveys with Kamloops area restaurant workers, managers and owners, project lead Dr. Rochelle Stevenson hopes that new strategies can be developed to support and educate restaurant workers and managers.
The first phase, conducted last December, involved preliminary interviews with owners and managers about what workplace policies they had around sexual harassment. Approximately 30 percent of the restaurants they spoke with had no sexual harassment policy, and about 12% had a general harassment policy. Interestingly, Stevenson said, there was a proportion of managers who didn’t know if they had one or not.
