The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association is looking to educate its members about workplace harassment (File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Building a safe workplace

SUMA hopes to combat harassment

Sep 25, 2019 | 4:56 PM

The organization that represents Saskatchewan’s cities, town and villages is looking to help their members better deal with harassment in the workplace.

The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) has teamed up with the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) to develop a template to help municipalities craft policies to deal with the harassment in their workplaces. The template includes information such as what constitutes harassment along with proper responses.

SUMA President Gordon Barnhart said bullying and harassment are issues in workplaces generally, including municipal government.

“We felt by taking this action, hopefully we can avoid harassment in the future and have people working together in a reasonable sensible way,” he said.

Barnhart said the issue is not just one involving staff and elected officials, but also includes members of the general public behaving inappropriately toward municipal employees. The SUMA president added they are also hoping to educate the general public with this effort.

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Overall Barnhart said he hopes municipal governments will look at the information and try to work it into their policies.

“We’re not trying prescribe everything they should do and can do,” he said.

The Resort Village of Candle Lake, which is north of Prince Albert has dealt with controversy on the issue of work place harassment after a councillor was found to have behaved in a harassing manner toward an employee on a number of occasions.

Borden Wasyluk, the mayor of Candle Lake said he had not seen the new template but was supportive of what SUMA is trying to work toward.

“There should be some mechanism around too, to that individual being harassed to make a complaint and have it investigated,” he said.

Wasyluk said he was not aware of issues where any citizens have behaved in a harassing manner toward staff or councillors.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter:@mjhskcdn