Bernice Yeung, Under cover of darkness, female janitors face rape and assault. Reveal (from The Center for Investigative Reporting) and Frontline (PBS), 23 June 2015. “Across the country, janitors at companies large and small say their employers have turned a blind eye to complaints of sexual assault, and attacked their credibility when they report abuse at the hands of supervisors or co-workers.” This story is part of Rape on the Night Shift, a collaboration between Reveal, FRONTLINE, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Univision and KQED.
Update: Andrew Donohue, Largest janitorial company agrees to reform response to sexual abuse. The Center for Investigative Reporting, 10 December 2015. “The nation’s largest janitorial company has agreed to an outside review of rape claims made by its female janitors in California, adding a new layer of oversight for a company with a history of facing accusations that it failed to prevent sexual violence. ABM Industries Inc. made the pledge as part of a settlement announced Wednesday night with Maria Bojorquez, a former employee who said she was raped by a supervisor while cleaning San Francisco’s Ferry Building in 2004. ABM, and the Bojorquez case specifically, was featured prominently in Rape on the Night Shift, a recent investigation into sexual abuse in the janitorial industry by Reveal, the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, KQED, Univision and FRONTLINE.”
Sexual assault can happen anywhere: in the military and on college campuses, in the Catholic church and at world-renowned yoga studios.
But the way the problem has played out in the workplace largely has escaped public attention. About 50 people a day are sexually assaulted or raped while they’re on the clock, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Any statistic about sexual violence, though, is a farce – only a fraction of victims ever come forward to report the crime.
When they do, companies can hide complaints from the public by settling them secretly before a lawsuit is filed. The results of cases that do make it to court often are cloaked by confidentiality agreements….
The night shift janitor is an easy target for abuse. She clocks in after the last worker has flipped off the lights and locked the door. It’s tough work done for little pay in the anonymity of night, among mazes of empty cubicles and conference rooms. She’s even less likely to speak up if she’s afraid of being deported or fired.
Across the country, janitors at companies large and small say their employers have compounded the problem by turning a blind eye to complaints and attacking their credibility when they report abuse at the hands of their supervisors or co-workers.
In the janitorial world, ABM is the largest. It employs the most cleaners in the country and has a history of facing charges that it failed to prevent sexual violence. It’s among a rare group of 15 American corporations to have been targeted multiple times by the federal government for sexual harassment.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued ABM three times since 2000 for mishandling complaints of sexual harassment or worse. Two of those cases involved allegations of rape, which is striking considering how rare it is for people to make these types of allegations publicly. In all three cases, the company settled and agreed to make improvements….
We found 42 lawsuits from the past two decades in which ABM janitors said they had been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped at work. An unknown number of cases have been hidden from public view through confidential settlements. And despite government-imposed reform plans, similar accusations continue to crop up. In Los Angeles, two lawsuits filed in the past year say women who complained about explicit comments or sexual assault were ignored.
After more than a year of correspondence, ABM officials declined to be interviewed….
ABM cleans high-rises, airports, universities and government buildings across the country. It has anti-harassment policies and training. It has a human resources department. About half of its nearly 65,000 janitors are unionized.
By contrast, most janitorial companies are tiny mom-and-pop operations that might not be worth taking to court. Or they’re off-the-books, fly-by-night operations that could disappear before a complaint can even be filed.
So ABM is one of the few janitorial companies with a paper trail. It is professional enough to respond to lawsuits. It turns large enough profits that aggrieved workers can file suit with the hope of a financial payoff at the end.
And among the larger, licensed businesses, ABM hardly is alone in being accused of botching sexual assault claims.
Bernice Yeung, “Seven Solutions That Could Help Stop Rape on the Night Shift.” PBS, 30 June 2015.