I’m posting here in addition to legal advice because of frustration, and in case anyone has experienced this here.
What is my course of action for workplace harassment, IL
Hello, here is my current situation. I have been experiencing retaliation and sexual harassment in my workplace. The retaliation started when I reported a contracted employee to a manager for racist comments. The manager simply told them to stop and they began retaliating against me by sabotaging work and abandoning their post when we have to work in close proximity, leaving me alone when backup is required.
I told a higher manager about these instances and they told me, “ I don’t really want to deal with this right now” And that was it.
The sexual harassment relates to two more contracted employees and range from inappropriate touching, trying to get me into camera blind spots so they can touch me, inappropriate comments, and even trying to buy me underwear.
Because of the incident with the racist comments and the higher manager, I felt alone in this situation and just kind of “work through it and hope for the best” it finally got to the point that I was having panic attacks before work so I requested another meeting with the higher manager.
During this meeting I was told that there would be a following meeting with the contracted employees manager.
I’m going to refer to the contracted manager as CM and my manager as MM and assistant manager as AM going forward.
The meeting was attended by myself, AM, and CM. During the meeting I was told for the first time that the employee that made the racist comments was made to do sensitivity training by MM, but I was not informed that any action had been taken after MM told me, “ I don’t really want to deal with this right now” CM confirmed verbally that what I was experiencing was in fact retaliation and sexual harassment, AM agreed. I was told that the contracted employees would be removed by my next shift after the weekend and some time off.
The next time I came into work one of the contracted employees that had the most severe sexual harassment complaints against them was still working and they had not informed me that they could not find replacements. I had a panic attack at work.
I was told that I could leave early but I would need to use sick time to make up these missed hours.
I do not know what to do, going into work makes me feel physically ill at this point. I know I should have advocated for myself more. This started in October of last year and the breaking point meeting happened last week.