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EOC launches TV and radio APIs on harassment in common workplaces
Is your company sharing co-working space or communal office with other organisations? Does your company offer internship for students? Are you volunteering for any organisation? Whatever your role and wherever you work, you deserve a safe and harassment-free working space to pursue your professional and other goals.
Since June 2020, the Sex Discrimination Ordinance, Disability Discrimination Ordinance and Race Discrimination Ordinance have been amended to prohibit sexual, disability and racial harassment between workplace participants in common workplaces. Under the law, “workplace participants” are defined to include employers, employees, interns, volunteers, partners in a firm, contract workers and their principals, as well as commission agents and their principals. The law further defines “workplace” as any place attended by a person as a workplace participant, or a place where a person works as a workplace participant.
To raise the public’s awareness of the enhanced protection, specifically harassment in common workplaces, the EOC has recently released a set of TV and radio APIs (announcements in the public interest). The TV API highlights the possible scenarios in which sexual, disability and racial harassment may occur in common workplaces, including an intern being sexually harassed by her boss, an employee of a charitable organisation making derogatory remarks about a voluntary worker and his disability, and a consignment promoter making sarcastic comments about the race of a consignment promoter from another company in a large retail shop. Since 27 May, the APIs can be watched/listened on various channels of free TV, pay TV and RTHK TV, as well as various channels of three radio stations, namely RTHK, Commercial Radio and Metro Broadcast. Public may also view the TV APIs on the EOC’s YouTube channel.
The release of the APIs, which followed the display of posters at around 60 MTR stations during 1-14 May 2021, is the latest educational and publicity effort of the EOC to promote the enhanced protection under the Discrimination Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Ordinance 2020. Indeed, since the Ordinance took effect last June, the EOC has been publishing leaflets, guidance and magazine articles to educate the public about the changes to Hong Kong’s anti-discrimination laws.
Download our explainer here to learn more about how the law defines sexual, disability and racial harassment.
