By Tara Fitzpatrick

Copyright stv

“Others had approached me saying ‘oh, just be careful of him, because he is a bit creepy. Just keep an eye out.’”

When Katie* was 19 and working in a Glasgow supermarket, she started getting warnings from other women about the actions of an older male colleague.

She recalls a time working alone with him, when he followed her around the store and showed her pornography on his phone.

“He was just stuck to my side the entire shift,” she said.

“I remember it so vividly. He showed me his phone which had automatically censored the content. He uncensored it and showed it to me.

“It was, you know, quite graphic. I do not want to see that. And then he started telling me details about who it’s depicting.

“I’m just trying to do my job and for him to approach me with something like that is shocking. It’s graphic.”

Initially Katie took her complaints to a supervisor who she says “tried to downplay it”.

Eventually, action was taken.

“I spoke to a different shift leader who was someone who had our backs. He was an extremely good colleague to work with. He eventually took it to the head manager, and after that, it was dealt with very quickly.

“They made sure that I wasn’t on shift with him. And then he ended up getting fired over it because other people had made complaints.”

Sexual harassment ‘endemic’ in Scottish workplaces

Katie’s story is one of many.

A recent survey of Unite Union members suggested 10% of women in Scotland have been sexually harassed at work.

Of the women who said they had been harassed, 52% said they had been recipients of inappropriate sexual jokes, and 45.6% said they experienced unwanted flirting.

In addition, 37.5% said they had been inappropriately touched, and 13.6% had been shown pornographic images by a manager or colleague.

Despite this, nearly three-quarters (73.5%) did not report incidents, often out of fear of not being believed or losing their jobs.

The Union branded the scale of sexual harassment in Scotland “endemic”.

Lorna Glen, regional women and equalities officer for Unite Scotland, told STV News: “I think it’s a workplace culture.

“I think that women maybe feel if they’re the one to address it and to bring it forward, they’re going to be penalised, as can quite often be the case.

“We’re hearing about women experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace on a daily basis. We are quite clear that employers are failing in their duty of care to protect their workers.

“This is a health and safety issue.”

The Worker Protection Act

It’s been almost one year since the Worker Protection Act came into force across the UK.

The legislation now makes it law for employers to prevent rather than just respond to sexual harassment at work.

Mandy Armstrong, an employment lawyer and director at Anderson Strathern Solicitors, said: “The concept of sexual harassment has existed in UK legislation for many, many years, but what the new legislation did was introduce a new proactive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment at work.

“Certainly, we’ve seen employers really sit up and take notice and look at how best their organisation can tackle the employers’ obligations. Now, that’s not to say that that will be the case for all employers.

“So there will be employers who perhaps are not aware of the changes to the legislation or, for whatever reason, the changes don’t feature high on their agenda.”

The Employment Rights Bill

Unite says the Act has failed in its ability to protect women from harassment, but the UK Government insist new legislation will go even further.

The Employment Rights Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent this autumn with staged implementation over 2025, 2026 and 2027.

The Bill, which brings sweeping changes to employee rights around zero-hour contracts and unfair dismissal, also addresses the issue of workplace sexual harassment.

It would make employers responsible for harassment caused by third parties (such as customers or visitors) and strengthen protections around reporting sexual harassment by including it under whistleblowing legislation.

During the TUC Congress in Brighton on Monday, union bosses voiced fears about the Employment Rights Bill being “watered down”.

The concerns came after the recent ministerial changes, which saw Angela Rayner and Justin Madders leave their posts as deputy prime minister and employment minister.

Alison McGovern, a minister in the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, said the Bill was a “cornerstone” of Labour’s general election manifesto.

She said details of the Bill were still to be worked out, adding: “I am confident we will get to the right place that means working people have decent rights at work that supports a thriving economy.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “Sexual harassment is completely unacceptable, it has no place in our society, and we expect any employer to take a zero tolerance approach wherever it is found.

“Our Employment Rights Bill will strengthen protections for workers, requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their employees, including by third parties.”

*Katie’s real name has been changed to protect her identity