Rabidue V Osceola the Case Rabidue v.

Rabidue v Osceola

The case Rabidue v. Osceola Refining Co. presented some very important ideas about civil rights, freedom of expression and sexual harassment. The purpose of this essay is to examine and review this case by using logical argument and empirical evidence to present a supporting opinion on the findings. My personal views on sexual harassment will be presented first before analyzing the both majority and dissenting sides of the argument. Finally this essay will present a hypothetical solution to the problem that Osceola was presented with in this particular case.

The idea of reason is very important in developing a practical and working definition of the term " sexual harassment." The term creates strong emotional reactions due to the personal nature of both sexual behavior and personal boundaries. To truly understand the power of this term it is important to break down each word and select an appropriate defintion to help create and model a reasonable argument.

According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Enforcement Guidance on Sexual Harassment, " Title VII does not proscribe all conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace. Thus it is crucial to clearly define sexual harassment: only unwelcome sexual conduct that is a term or condition of employment constitutes a violation. 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11(a). The EEOC's Guidelines define two types of sexual harassment: "quid pro quo" and "hostile environment." The Guidelines provide that "unwelcome" sexual conduct constitutes sexual harassment when "submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment." This definition is very broad and leaves much for the subjective side of human reasoning skills to work with.

For me, there is no right for anyone to work for someone else within the private sector of business. Exchanging ones labor for wages comes at some forfeiture of personal freedom and any type of harassment, sexual or otherwise, must be expected at some level of this agreement. In this case, Ms. Rabidue did have some reasonable expectation that her working conditions had the potential of being offensive and the only right she possessed was to simply walk away from her situation.

Men and women are sexual creatures and eliminating this human feature within the workplace will always be a challenge as long as this practice continues. This social experiment is relatively new to Western culture as women within the private sector workforce has grown significantly over the last 50 years. Cherry (2005) offered a reasonable cause for such cases of sexual harassment. She suggested that "This view of women as only working temporarily is still an active stereotype. Single women were seen as temporarily single -- going from a father's protection to that of a husband's -- and working in the paid labor force was mostly seen as transient status until a husband's financial support could be found. Women's work has historically been lower-paid, in part based upon the idea that a single woman's wages would only be squandered on extravagances " (p.543).

Osceola was caught in an interesting bind when confronted with the original dispute. The main source of Ms. Rabidue's harassment, Mr. Henry, appeared to be more important in terms of value to the company. It was also very clear that Ms. Rabidue did not fit into this team very well and was causing a distraction due to her sex. Osceola may have handled this situation better by identifying the fracture in the team earlier and removing Ms. Rabidue from her position. As a private company it must be stressed, this organization needs no compelling reason to fire someone other than that they are not contributing to the productivity of the company. Ms. Rabidue clearly fell within that guideline of judgment and should have been let go much earlier.

Conclusions