An Important Step Forward For #MeToo

President Joe Biden signed the second one into law just this month. Some states, including New York, have also taken action to make it easier for women to sue their harassers. So it seemed like a good time to check in and how much has changed since the beginning of the Me Too movement five years ago, and how how much hasn't I'm here with two members of the U. S

Congress who can help answer those questions. Representative Sherry Busto, said, Democrat from Illinois, and Representative Lowest Frankel of Florida, also a Democrat. They were the driving force behind the two new laws I just mentioned, and it's worth noting, by the way, that both of these laws passed the Congress with overwhelming support, not just from Democrats but Republicans too.

Compress moment, Frankoh, don't we start with you, because just recently President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed in November called the Speak Out Act. Can you tell us about this bill? The bill makes unenforceable any predispute nondisclosure agreement. What does that mean? That means these contracts that people sign and when they sign up for a job, I say, they always have these I call them gobblegook closes. You don't know what they're saying, but you sign it

away your rights. You sign away your rights to actually come forward and tell us buddy, for example, that you've been sexually harassed or abused or raped. You are silenced. And this new law makes those kind of agreements unenforceable. And these are non disclosure agreements that if you have a grievance against the workplace, you've signed a piece of paper that says you won't go public with it. You're

going to stay quiet. And what this new law says is those are unenforceable, unenforceable if it's about sexual abuse, sexual harassment, or rape, something like that and what was the inspiration for this bill and how did it come together? Well, you know when the when the meat tune movements came about. Look, sexual harassment, rape, that's been going on as long as we've been human beings. Correct, About two years ago, the Bipartisan Women's Caucus we started holding hearings on the issue

of sexual harassment in the workplace. And these are Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the women members of Congress. We came together and we were really shocked what we heard because you know, we listen. We had heard about Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and the movie stars and

so forth. But we started to hear from waitresses who told us they had to endure getting pinched to get their tips, who tell made to wearing panic buttons because they were getting raped by customers, a farm worker who was raped in the fields by her supervisor. Even a tech professional who was told you have to go out on dates to get these jobs. So we realized this is rampant, and it is about one in three women in the workplace are sexually harassed, and men are too,

but mostly women. Is there something very important about this bill that I think everybody should be mindful of and what an n DA is in the first place. One of the reasons was originally to protect corporate secrets that are valuable trade secrets, and then then it started to be expanded to really cover up everything. And then corporations decided, this is the way we're going to protect our reputation. If people don't know about discrimination, about harassment, about rape,

it protects our reputation. So that's so they were silencing victims or now who are survivors, they were silencing them. What this bill and then the Force our Reputration Bill does. It says, look, we want you to protect your reputation, but you've got to do it in a different way.

It's not by covering up your dirty little secrets. You can protect your reputation by having good management practices, by saying sexual harassment abuse will not be tolerated, by making sure the management gets that message out and that it's enforced. And that was not the first bill that passed this year to protect women's rights. Congresswoman Boost, does you introduced the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment ACQUI President Biden

signed into law in March? Is that correct? Correct? Can you tell us about that bill. Sure, so, uh, we first wrote it in my office back. So things in Washington don't always move quickly. But how we advanced from seventeen, which was really at the height of the meat too movement. Right, How, I'm not a lawyer. I'm a I was a journalist and then I worked in healthcare, and then I came to Congress. I'm not a lawyer. Lois is a lawyer. So I read this story about this horrendous, horrendous case

of sexual assault, sexual abuse in the workplace. Just these horrible stories of being raped, of of women being asked to undress in front of their male supervisors, of women saying they felt like meat at a meat market, that they couldn't take a male partner to any of their conferences. Just just really some horrible, horrible behavior by the men in this company and so and why we had never heard about it was because every complaint that came forward, they had to take it to an arbitrator that was

paid for by the company. Employees couldn't sue the company because they had an arbitration agreement similar to the non disclosure agreement which you signed that says nope, you can't talk about it. These forced arbitration agreements say, if you have a dispute with the company, you can't sue, you have to go through an arbitrator that's paid for by the company. That most often there is no settlement at all, and most often it is not found in favor of

the person who's bringing it forward. So these were these silencing mechanisms, the non disclosure agreements and the forced arbitration.

So the two bills that we're talking about, the one by Congresswoman Lois Frankel on nondisclosure agreements, the one that we wrote out of my office on forced arbitration, it really is a one to punch that we needed to be able to make sure that the survivors of this have an opportunity if they want to go to court and if they want to talk about this, especially with

their fellow employees, they can do it now. So both of these laws, both sign this year, had another notable feature to them, which is that they passed with overwhelming support in the House and the Senate, not just from Democrats but Democrats and Republicans. And that's a pretty uncommon thing these days in Washington, where Democrats and Republicans don't agree on anything. How is it that your bills were

able to get so much support. So we got a hundred and thirteen Republicans to vote for our forced arbitration in the House. In the House, the hundred and thirteen, think about that. On the nondisclosure agreement bill, we got a hundred Republicans in the House. Both of these bills passed unanimously out of the Senate. The women who testified before the House Judiciary Committee who were survivors of some horrible,

horrible sexual assault, rape harassment in the workplace. Their testimony was so powerful that you you really could not walk away from that and say, I've got to do something about it. And I don't care if you're a Democratic Republican. And these were the hearings while the bill was under consideration. Women came forward to inform the public about what had happened to them. Keep in mind, we had to subpoena them to testify because they were operating under nondisclosure agreements

and forced arbitration. They weren't allowed unless they were subpoenaed by Congress to speak. That gave them protection to That's correct, and that's how we they were able to tell their stories and they were just horrible stories. And so I give them a lot of credit, these survivors who are have been able to share their stories. And then, um, the Senate Lindsey Graham. You know like in politics that the phrase about strange bedfellows. He was a real champion.

This is Lindsey Grahm McCord, the Senator from South Carolina, Republican, very staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump. Yeah, you might not hear lois doing a shout out to them, but but I'll just give them. I'll just give him credit on this. We we have this news conference when we're announcing the forced arbitration bill, and he gets up to the podium and he says a message to the businesses out there, it is bad business to have these

forced arbitration classes for sexual harassment, sexual assault. And so it was a really strong message, and the Republicans stood up to what is a lot of times their foundation of their party, and um, you know that could be big business. The US Chamber of Commerce lobbied hard against our bills. So we had had a little different experience

just in terms of members. We had Ken Buck in the House who worked hard both on my bill and on Cherry's on the arbitration, and other Republicans and the Republican and in the Senate, the champion really was Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who was also one of the Senate sponsors. But some of the senators put hold on the bill in the Senate and Marcia Blackbird and swatted them down. What were their objections when they put a hold? Some of them are just ordinery. They

put a whole on everything. There's some of them. I say, look, sometimes it's politically driven, sometimes it's value driven. I'm not gonna say which was which. The fact is, these two bills, there were historically probably two of the biggest labor bills to give rights to people in the workplace in a very very long time. My conversation with Representatives Frankel and Boostos continues after the break. Both of these bills of

course protect women who come forward and women. That's a good point because it does protect men to on the basis of sexual harassment. But of course there are all kinds of other forms of harassment, racial discrimination, age discrimination. Do you see this as kind of narrow end of the wedge that once you get these then later other

forms of protection will inevitably follow. Well, I can't think of a Democrat who is not in favor of adding racial discrimination, age discrimination, l G, B, t Q, discribin. I think any anything illegal we would love to have that. In fact, Hank Johnson, who is a member of Congress from Georgia, he has a bill that includes all of that. And the problem is we cannot get enough support on

the other side of the eye. And so we made this decision again after I found out what forced arbitration was five years ago, were that we were going to do this, carve out and at least try to make some progress in this area. And I think that's the same thing with Congresswoman frankl She It's like, yeah, we wanted nondisclosure givements in all of this, but we also want success and we wanted to move things forward. People who understand the the politics and they say it's like

making sausage, but this is a pretty good sausage. But that doesn't mean that any form of illegal discrimination should not be silenced. That's my opinion. As Sherry said, that's every Democrat I know would agree with that, maybe some Republicans, but I could tell you this, there are members who have been trying to get these bills passed for a long time. And the thing that we are facing as of January three of next year of three, is that the majority in the House will change. That's when the

new Congress is going to end. It will be a Republican House after the midterm elections. The Senate, of course, will still be under the control of Democrats. Right. So, but what will happen with that is Hank Johnson's bill, that's a very good bill, probably won't see the light of day after the Republicans take the majority in the House. Um. So, yet again, we'll probably have to go another two years and then hopefully the Congress will be able to make

some progress after that. So what's next? Uh? These are two big bills. You've described them as being historic bills. Hard to argue with that, Um, where do you go from year? Obviously this is something that could actually put a dent in this kind of behavior. Um, And yet there's so much further to go. Well, I think what's next? I mean, we can't you can't just say okay, we did this and move on. The word has to get out because most people think about it, they have no

idea that this bill was signed. They still don't know they signed an agreement. And so getting the word out, making sure that corporations know they can enforce these agreements, and I really I think spreading the word is very important. Forced arbitration clauses and nondisclosure agreements will still be in

employment contracts. They will still be in, for instance, the terms and conditions box that you check off when you're you know, put downloading some app, if you're doing a right to your app, if you're hiring a moving company, if you they will still be there. Um, And you have to think about the unscrupulous businesses that are still out there who will not make a where to the customer or to the employee that as it pertains the sexual harassment or sexual assault, those are null and void.

But how many businesses are going to say, oh, by the way, even though you were harassed and even though you were you know, attacked or whatever, those don't apply. So so to Lois's point, we want to make sure that people know about it, that lawyers know about that this, that that employees do, that customers do. And you know, a lot of times you you write a bill and you see it all the way through and then you move on to your next thing. It is going to

take our good friends in the media. It's going to take making sure that we're going out and talking to our associations and the chambers and all of that to make sure that people know that these are null and void. As of two. Representative Lois Frankell, Representative Sherry Bustos, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

Thank you, Thank you. Wes. Let's pull back the lens of it now and take a outer look at how things have changed in the workplace since Me Too began and what more needs to be done, because there's a lot to spell that out. I'm joined by Fatima gus Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center here in Washington, and my colleague Rebecca Greenville, who leads Bloomberg's equality coverage. She's in New York. Thank you both for being here, Thank you for having us. So happy to

be here. I was just speaking with two members of Congress, Charry boost Dos and Lois Frankel, about two laws that were recently signed that really put in place protections that didn't exist before for employees and companies who have been sexually harassed. Those would seem like two significant steps forward. New York has recently come forward and suspended the statute

of limitations in civil lawsuits for sexual abuse cases. And so it seems like in some ways things are being done that have made us come a bit of the way further than they were before. And let me start with you for Team out, how do you see things going and where are things working and where are they really not? Yeah, we've been tracking this very closely, UM, trying to understand the impact that me too has had

since me too and viral. And what we know is that overall, twenty two states and d C have passed more than seventy workplace anti harassment bills and and they range right. Some of them are about things like the statute of limitations. Others have passed and have focused on which workers are cover extending their non discrimination protections for example to independent contractors. Are there some industries that are

are leading the way for others? You know, that's a harder thinking to measure in In some ways, we know that there are some UH indicators that create opportunities for harassment, and so, for example, sectors that also pay really low wages and have other conditions of work that are sometimes

abusive to workers, those are spaces where harassment thrives. It's also the case, though, that harassment often thrives in workplaces where women make up only a small percentages of those either in power overall or on the job right, so you are more likely to see harassment in these historically very male professions like finance, Wall Street, but also like construction,

where they're longstanding reports of harassment. One of the things that you have seen, on the other hand, in uh the aftermath of to Go in viral are employers at the very very top, you know, CEOs, C suite individuals naming that this was critical to them, following through with programs, taking very seriously allegations of harassment, putting in place policies. And so I actually think what we'll have to do

is measure the impact of that level of leadership over time. Rebecca, in your coverage of equality, what changes have you seen, both from the workers side and from employers in in protecting people from harassment. Yes, so I think when we talk about the me too movement. There's kind of mis understanding or misconsuring that it's about like harassment will never happen, and you know, and I think that's that's never been

the case. They're always going to be bad actors. I mean, there shouldn't be, and we should hope for that, But it's about the way that the system deals with them and creating cultures where it's not tolerated and rules and

laws that can handle the behavior. And I do think that's where we've seen changes broadly, Like with these laws that you're talking about, I think we've seen it even just standards have changed for the way the things we deem acceptable or you know, I was just thinking of one of a couple examples of CEOs are people who have been in charge who, um, you know, they didn't disclose consensual relationships and they lost their jobs or felt

like they needed to step down. Kind of there is just a greater expectation that we're going to be more transparent about those things. Just I think there is less tolerance for the behavior, and that's really what I think has been one of the more noticeable changes across industries broadly.

Have you seen a rise in the number of women who are now willing to come forward uh than they were before me to just in general, are our laws don't treat people who make very serious allegations well, and our laws don't treat people who um have been accused of very serious things well. It's it just isn't really set up. And yet despite those structural problems in our

legal system, UM survivors keep coming forward. And even though everything would tell you that that's not a good idea, people come forward, even though there's still shaming and blaming, they come forward still. And I think that in part was the power of me too more with Fatima gos Graves and Rebecca Greenfield when we come back. Fatima, you said that our laws are not set up well to handle people who come forward. Could elaborate on that a

bit more. Yeah, many people feel as if they have been real abused by our legal system and and that's not a good thing. And some of that is that, you know, it is set up where you have to keep telling your story over and over again and to people who whole role is to be skeptical of you. So some of it is really the structural of what it means to come forward. Some of it is that we have rules in place that mean, in most states

you have to come forward very quickly. You have to have made a decision about your desire to you know, have a legal claim of some sort and and and act on that very quickly. When um, that's not really how the cycle of recovery works for people. It usually takes a long time. But if you have a hundred and eighty days or three hundred days, or in some states a couple of years to be able to make a state claim, it is really really difficult to do all of that in a short time. It's not usually

the first thing people are thinking about. And beyond that, beyond the short time periods, we are still in a situation where retaliation is pretty typical. On this point that you know, those sometimes the laws and aren't set up to perfectly meet people where they are. We just had a really great story run on Bloomberg recently about this new law in New York that extended cases that may have passed the statute of limitations for sexual abuse and

harassment claims. And the story was about how there have been all these claims made for these suits. You know, these people had experiences before, but for whatever reason didn't report them. And now you know, we've kind of closed this loophole with this law that's allowing a flood of cases, a lot of them which are have been high profile there These allegations are coming forward because of this, you know,

pretty slight tweak to a law, fatima. A lot of companies have put in place changes, new policies to protect women who come forward, But have you seen more willingness within companies now to actually investigate, especially high ranking executives, when harassment claim is made. Most people don't even report allegations of harassment. They don't like if they experience harassment, they often don't tell anyone, let alone go to HR

and make a formal complaint. But the thing that I would say that is a shift is that companies and and their boards are understanding that the risk analysis around not addressing harassment at work has shifted. So you know it. I would say it used to be probably that the easiest past of resistance for a lot of places was to do very little. Well, that creates additional risk for sure, and um and so I I think companies organizations generally are learning about this a little bit in real time.

They're learning from high profile cases, sort of watching organizations and their boards who failed to take appropriate measures and then found themselves with not only a giant legal claim, but a public relations claim that was much bigger than if they had just addressed it on the front end. You know, it's not a new idea that harassment is

against the law. So the things that we can do now to make a difference change loopholes in the law that mean that more people are covered, that the that the consequences for harassment are steeper, that it is easier to bring claims that you don't encounter hurdles, including the fact that you have to be silent. So we can change those incentives, and we can better enforce the law,

including the long time constant ban on retaliation. The team at gous Graves and Rebecca Greenfield, thanks so much for speaking with me today. Thanks for having me. Thank you. You can read all of Bloomberg's equality coverage on Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here at the Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I

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