THE EU Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn will today introduce a new initiative to step up the fight against sexual harassment the workplace, reports Patrick Smyth, from Brussels.
Mr Flynn will start a consultation process with the European social partners with a view to reaching a collective agreement which, under the Maastricht Treaty, could then be given the force of law by the Council of Ministers.
But he warned that if they failed to reach agreement he would not hesitate to bring forward a new directive on the issue. The Commission is asking the social partners to work on questions like a uniform definition of sexual harassment, the prohibition of and active measures to prevent harassment, and the establishment in workplaces of a system of confidential counsellors.
Mr Flynn said yesterday that to date only Belgium and the Netherlands had set up a comprehensive system to fight harassment in the workplace and that the issue was one which, polls showed, had affected at least 30 per cent of the female workforce and 4 per cent of the male.