New Bipartisan Bill Would Fight Sexual Harassment At The Workplace

The EMPOWER Act — an acronym for the “Ending the Monopoly of Power Over Workplace Harassment through Education and Reporting Act” — is also co-sponsored by Reps. Ted Poe, Jerry Nadler, Barbara Comstock, and Lisa Blunt Rochester in the House and Sens. Kamala Harris and Lisa Murkowski in the upper chamber.
The legislation focuses on five major areas: banning companies from having non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements in their contracts, requiring public companies to disclose all their settlements in the annual filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), creating a a confidential tip-line to supplement the current complaint system at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), revising the tax code so taxpayer money is not used to fund harassment settlements and survivors aren’t penalized, and mandating companies have sexual harassment prevention training programs in place.
At least 21 advocacy organizations have thrown their support behind the bill, including the
National Domestic Workers Alliance, Human Rights Campaign, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, NAACP, and the National Women’s Law Center.