PEI

Province to include sexual harassment section on Employment Standards posters

The P.E.I. government is in the middle of updating its Employment Standards posters to include a section on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Province to update the posters in at least nine different languages

The province's Department of Labour and Industrial Relations is updating the posters to include a section on sexual harassment. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The P.E.I. government is in the middle of updating its Employment Standards posters to include a section on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Though the guide to Employment Standards has a section about sexual harassment, the poster displayed in workplaces doesn't. 

Constance Robinson, director of the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations, says her goal is to update the posters so Island employees can increase their awareness of the sexual harassment policy. 

"While we have this information on our website, when we reviewed the posters we realized the posters had focused on payment of wages and overtime issues, but had not referenced the fact that there are also protections for employees with respect to sexual harassment," Robinson said.

Posters to be updated in multiple languages

The province has had the current posters in multiple languages for about a year now, Robinson said — they've most recently added Hindi.

She said the update is also to help employees understand that employers must have their own sexual harassment policy is mandatory for employers.

The English and French language posters will be updated first, and will come out near the end of the month. The Arabic, Filipino, Hindi, Mandarin, Persian, Spanish and Thai posters will also be updated as soon as possible, Robinson said.

With files from Malcolm Campbell