NYC business owners ‘shocked’ by baffling new sex harassment rules

By: John A.

New York business owners are feeling harassed and baffled by the latest city and state campaigns to tackle workplace sexual harassment — moves that researchers say won’t effectively curb abuse.

Employers are being required to train employees and post policies aimed at preventing harassment by Oct. 9, deploying internal materials or those provided by local regulators.

But instead of doing cartwheels, dazed business owners are burning up the phone lines to Albany, seeking more help.

“I was shocked to hear about these new laws,” one New York City business owner told The Post. “I’m sure training is good, but I hope Albany doesn’t start legislating me on how to run my business,” he added. “It’s a slippery slope.”

“We’re not in disagreement with the laws — but the lack of adequate notification to employers, particularly to small business owners, is frustrating,” said Greg Biryla, New York state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.

“We’re also concerned about a missed opportunity to craft better policies that would have suited a wider variety of employees, rather than having this one-size-fits-all approach.”

Ian Carleton Schaefer, an employment law expert at Epstein Becker Green, said the latest laws are “laudable,” but lashed out at the implementation. “The annual requirement and 2019 deadlines for compliance can be challenging for large enterprise employers,” he said.

“I find we are telling people about the laws for the first time because they didn’t even know about them,” added Elizabeth Clemants, a mediator on gender workplace issues at Leadership12, an advisory and training firm in New York City. Clemants doesn’t think the new laws will do much to improve workplace harassment. And she’s not alone.

An internal study conducted by a team at Motivate Design, a research firm in lower Manhattan, concluded that the latest batch of New York laws will only make women feel “worse” about reporting sexual harassment.

“These do not solve the fundamental problem,” said Mona Patel, CEO at Motivate Design. “You have to first articulate the problem, what exactly is sexual harassment, and also foster a better work environment, all of which these laws fail to address.”

Last week, New York State lawmakers moved a step closer to a new batch of reforms aimed at damping down workplace sexual harassment after listening to harrowing testimony from victims.

And as Democratic state Sen. Jessica Ramos ramped up efforts earlier this month with a bill requiring New York employers to circulate their sexual harassment prevention policies and training in the primary languages of workers, one legal expert said the laws so far are no “panacea” for success.

“It is all about constant management and re-education,” said Richard Greenberg, an attorney at Jackson Lewis.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Cuomo referred The Post to comments made earlier by the governor on the New York sexual harassment laws.

“We have the most aggressive anti-sexual harassment laws in the United States,” he said.

The office of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t respond.