By Alexandra Mendoza

A bill by California State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) seeks to protect janitorial workers who work late at night, making them targets for sexual harassment and assault.

Last year’s “Rape on the Night Shift” investigative journalism series by PBS’s Frontline shed light on the dangers faced by the thousands of  female janitors while cleaning offices overnight.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 8 percent of all rapes occur while the victim is working, and that about 50 workers a day are sexually assaulted.

The most alarming aspect of this is that these crimes are rarely reported by the victims. According to Department of Justice data, only 24 percent of incidents are reported, which is well below the average in comparison to other violent crimes in the workplace.

One of the factors behind the low reporting percentage is that many of the women who work in this industry are undocumented, so they fear the implications of reporting the incident.

It is estimated that the majority of janitors in San Diego are women, and most of them are minorities.

“Too often these women are overlooked because they work alone in the dead of night after the rest of us have gone home. They deserve better,” stated Assemblywoman Gonzalez.

“As we have in other sectors, we have to make sure that vulnerable workers receive appropriate training and protections from sexual assault, and effective, safe ways to report crimes.”

Under Assembly Bill 1978, the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) will create sexual harassment prevention training materials, establish a toll-free hotline for reporting complaints, and require employers to post and display a notice with information regarding the laws.  Additionally, companies would be required to not have female janitors work alone on the night shift.

The bill will also require supervisors and workers receive at least four hours of sexual harassment training per year.

AB 1978 is sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California, and was approved this week by the California Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment.

In the coming weeks, the bill will go before the Appropriations Committee and, if approved, would go to the Assembly in June, where it would need a majority vote in order to move to the State Senate.