San Diego’s Embarrassing Sexual Harassment Problem

As you’ve surely heard, San Diego mayor Bob Filner is currently embroiled in a scandal involving lascivious sexual harassment allegations made by more than 10 different women.

Filner is currently undergoing a 2-week behavioral counseling program in an effort to rehabilitate himself—and, presumably, to help quell the numerous demands for his resignation.

When AB 1825 Training Doesn’t Happen, Who’s To Blame?

Where the story really gets interesting for us here at CED is the A.B. 1825 angle. Filner is, of course, a supervisor employed by the City of San Diego and therefore covered by the mandatory training requirement. Filner says he never received this training.

Filner’s attorney, Harvey Berger, argues that San Diego’s failure to provide this training means that the city should be on the hook for Filner’s legal bills.

Are you providing your required A.B. 1825 training? Get it done, quickly and affordably. Learn more.

Various news sources report that Filner was in fact scheduled for his A.B. 1825 training, but that the training was cancelled. (There is a dispute about whether it was Filner’s office, or the City of San Diego, that cancelled the training.)

Don’t Get Caught Short

Regardless of how this all shakes out, the message for California employers is clear: It’s your responsibility—not your supervisors’—to ensure that your A.B. 1825 training obligations are met, and that everyone who must be trained does, in fact, receive training in a timely manner.

If not, even if a supervisor does something so egregious, harassment-wise, that you could reasonably argue that training wouldn’t have made a bit of difference—you as the employer remain liable for failing to meet your training obligations.

And as the City of San Diego would tell you these days, it’s not a fun situation to be in.

Coming up tomorrow: An easy way to avoid finding yourself in the same undesirable boat in which San Diego is currently adrift.

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