A Toronto cook alleges she was badgered about her sexuality, touched without consent and subjected to a sexist work atmosphere by three former bosses at one of the city’s most popular, high-profile restaurants.
Between July 2012 and January 2014, Kate Burnham, a former pastry chef at Weslodge restaurant, was routinely sexually harassed and abused at the King Street W. eatery, according to the application she has filed in Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal.
Burnham, now 24, is seeking $225,000 in damages and formal apologies from each of her alleged harassers. She is also asking the tribunal to order Weslodge staff and each of the three former chefs to take training in how to spot and stop sexual harassment. Burnham is being represented in her
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Burnham’s application alleges that day sous chef Dan Lidbury called her names, such as “angry dyke,” bombarded her with lewd questions, grabbed her breasts and, when she wouldn’t allow his advances, warned that her “attitude” put her on “thin f—king ice.”
Chef du cuisine Kanida Chey regularly harassed Burnham, even grabbing her crotch, according to the application, and he and Lidbury told her she was “harassed,” because she “was hot” and “that kind of attention is flattering.” The application also alleges that night sous chef Colin Mercer made repeated jokes about Burnham’s sexual orientation and “smacked” her rear with a metal flipper “so hard she could not sit down.”
Weslodge, which calls itself a modern-day saloon and is one of several properties co-owned by INK Entertainment and ICON Legacy Hospitality, failed to investigate Burnham’s complaints, which were “well-known,” her application
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In an interview, she alleged a senior manager stroked her thigh in the deserted dining room one night after her shift ended.
She left Weslodge soon after, she says, moved on and didn’t look back. She says she regrets not following up with her tribunal application.
Several accounts from Burnham’s former colleagues illustrate the sexually charged atmosphere that she describes at Weslodge. In a witness statement filed in support of Burham’s tribunal application, Sophie Han, 28, a former Weslodge cook, called the working atmosphere “anarchy.”
When she ran into her own problems with harassment at Weslodge, she “would have to kick back and threaten my managers with a knife if they came any closer,” according to her witness statement. Han often felt “your only option was to quit,” Han says in the statement.
Burnham told the Star she needed her nighttime job at the saloon to help pay for a part-time English degree at the University of Toronto. Since Chey had the power to fire her, she says she reached out to Weslodge’s daytime sous chef, Dan Lidbury, for help.
He had the power to bring Burnham onto his team for the lunch shift. According to her tribunal application, Lidbury promised to “protect” her from
through a public way online, which seemed very unprofessional. I think the outcome of her getting fired
In an express recognition that every sexual harassment case is likely to be profoundly circumstance-driven, Mansfield J appropriately focused on assessing the credibility of the witness, whether the alleged event did in fact occur, and whether it occurred in the way which she alleged it occurred, with a range of evidence before him. Some of the alleged conducts were directly denied: with regard to an April 2005 allegation concerning A Hickinbotham, after assessing the ‘reasonable’ time period in which the incident should have been reported given the surrounding circumstances (e.g. Poniatowska’s position at work), the judge rejected her claim on ground of the significant delay in reporting the incident. Reasonableness was again considered in dealing with a September 2005 allegation concernin...
While writing the screenplay for Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, the writer William Rose knew that the theme and characters would test race boundaries in this country. He cleverly established Matt and Christina Drayton as two wealthy and cultured San Franciscans who considered themselves liberal and unbigoted people. When their naïve 23 yr. old daughter Joanna brings home her 37 yr. old Negro fiancé Dr. John Prentiss, the Drayton’s are astonished and aghast, not just by John being black, but because they’re forced to reexamine their personal beliefs regarding racism. Joanna’s character was portrayed as a gorgeous and vibrant bottle of sprite with a big heart, groomed by her parents to have a modern and unbias...
Maria DeSimone, 40 years old; wife and mother of two children of Palm Bay, Florida, was refused employment at the establishment in which she applied to. The circumstances surrounding the case were as follows. Ms. DeSimone possessed two years of previous restaurant experience, she applied for a position at Texas Roadhouse of Palm Bay to the manager of the facility. When she never heard back from the manager (who said he would get back to her); she happened to be discussing the situation with a friend; the friend told her that Texas Roadhouse had just hired her 19-year-old daughter to the position in which she had just applied for. Previously when she had not heard back from the manager about the position, he told her that “they weren’t hiring at this time” (Lee and Hymowitz,
In 2005, a female secretary filed a compliment regarding her exclusion from a social gathering on the basis of her gender. The case eventuated from an issue that the manager had not encouraged the secretary to attend the Christmas party which was served by a topless waitress. As a result of the secretary having no knowledge of the party occurring while working that night, she had become distressed by what she believed was happening...
...e whole case will be reverted, but they may have conclusive evidence that has been over looked. As the child’s social worker, I would hope that at the end of the proceedings that there was a happy ending for all of the people concerned, but it would still have to be David’s interests that would come first.
sexual harassment. On more than one occasion women were told that if they did not perform
Sandy Welsh, Jacquie Carr, Barbara MacQuarrie, Audrey Huntly “I’m Not Thinking of It as Sexual Harassment”: Understanding Harassment across Race and Citizenship. Gender and Society. 20.1 ( 2006): 87-107. Print.
reported that she had been abducted from a parking lot and raped by a black male ("A.B. Butler").
It all started on the evening of December 7, 1982. A young waitress in her twenties, named Debbie Carter, had taken off of her shift early at a local Ada bar. She proceeded to enjoy a few drinks with several old high school friends before heading home shortly after midnight. Debbie was last seen having a confrontation with a man who was a regular at the bars as she got into her vehicle. The waitress’s friends had asked her to come join a group of them going to back to one of the friend’s houses to continue the hanging out; Debbie declined, but about 2:30a.m., her friend, Gina received two calls back to back from Debbie. Through all the n...
Anna’s claim comes under the broad rubric of the unlawful employment practice of sexual harassment which has become known as “hostile work environment” developed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
She was working, like many other minimum wage jobs, in harsh and dangerous conditions because her employer did not care about her safety. I would feel worn out and concerned for my safety if I had to constantly worry about grease burns or heat strokes, or whatever the case might be. This is a double standard that annoys Tirado. An example of this is, “It turns out that whether sleeping on a public bench is a crime or not depends entirely on whether you have enough money to look like you have a place to sleep.”
Glazer, S. (1996, July 19). Crackdown on sexual harassment. CQ Researcher, 6, 625-648. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/
Sexual harassment in the workplace has been a huge problem in recent history. It can happen to anyone, and it can happen everywhere. It can affect all types of races, genders and ages. Statistics today show that more and more sexual harassment has become an issue due to the large number of cases presented. Mainstream media becomes consumed covering sexual harassment because of the high-profile cases.
... named in the1970s, workplace sexual harassment has increasingly been the subject of legal measures, awareness campaigns and workplace policies in countries across the world. Through these initiatives, a broad consensus around how this kind of treatment should be defined has been developed: it is usually identified as sex-based or sexual behavior unwelcome to its recipient. The research conducted on its extent and dynamics has confirmed that workplace sexual harassment, although it has male victims, is overwhelmingly directed at women. Moreover, it appears to be more often encountered by those who are in a less-powerful labor market position, including young workers, domestic workers, women in non-traditional jobs, migrant workers and women in the informal sector. It is also apparent that sexual harassment imposes heavy costs on both its victims and their employers.