Originally Posted by
tess-leigh
Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the thread, but this topic is important.
I see that you are in Canada. Grab any person who has been granted supervisory responsibilities over anyone else, and tell them that the jokes and sexist comments are making you feel uncomfortable and that you want it to stop. That supervisor must take action, personally, and must ensure that the matter is dealt with.
Canada Human Rights Act: every supervisor who becomes aware of (by direct experience or by report from any non-supervisory personnel) and fails to take action to stop workplace incidents of discrimination based upon any of the Charter forbidden discrimination grounds, is personally liable, and may be subject to fines up to $500,000 (going by memory) and jail terms up to five years, even if that supervisor is not in the supervisory line for any of the participants. Ethnic and sexist jokes are definitely prohibitted.
The law is deliberately designed to invalidate any claims of "Yeah, I heard about that, but it wasn't my people involved so it wasn't my responsibility to do anything." Every supervisor is responsible for every incident of discrimination that they become aware of. As far as the law is concerned, for a supervisor to know of the incident and to do nothing is the same as the supervisor condoning the incident: the inactive supervisor is deemed an accomplice to the continuation of the discrimination. And that's personal liability. Any military order for a supervisor to ignore illegal discrimination would be an unlawful order [as best I understand.]
It doesn't matter if you aren't the target of the jokes: if you are made uncomfortable by the jokes, you have the right under the Canada Human Rights Act to insist that the jokes be stopped. The existance of the ethnic or sexual discrimination is considered offensive by itself under the CHRA.
When I was trained as a supervisor in the Canadian Government, the trainers made it absolutely clear: if you are a supervisor and you know of illegal discrimination, take action As Soon As Possible (and document it), no matter who is involved, because if you know and don't act, you will be held individually responsible. The organization will be held responsible too, but it is individuals that get sent to jail. And the trainers emphasized that any person (employee, contractor, guest, spouse -- anyone!) has the right to complain to any supervisor and that is sufficient to consider the entire organization to be officially notified.