Is harassment rife at fast food giant?

The headline is:

Harassment rife at fast food giant

But is it? The story states:

Half of all Restaurant Brand workers who responded to a survey said they’d been personally affected or witness to sexual harassment at work.

Sounds massive. But who did the survey and how many responded?

The Unite union poll was inspired by a Stuff #metooNZ investigation into rape, assaults and harassment of KFC and Pizza Hut workers around the country, and was sent out to 9000 current and former union-affiliated Restaurant Brands workers the following day.

So the survey went out to 9,000 people who were union members.

The survey, which attracted 168 responses, showed assaults and harassment were not restricted by gender

So fewer than 2% even took part. That is an incredibly low response rate. It might suggest that the 98% did not respond as they did not see a problem. The survey is very self selecting and unrepresentative.

Of the 168 responses, 25 percent said they had been a victim of sexual harassment while at work.

Another 25 per cent said they had witnessed or been reliably informed of a co-worker being the victim of sexual harassment or assault.

Those who witnesses harassment may overlap those who said they were victims.

So the only hard stat we have is 42 people out of 9,000 said they were a victim of sexual harassment.

Is this rife? Is this higher or lower than any other employer?

The intent is not to minimise the harm caused by any employees who were harassed. Such behaviour should not happen. But to examine whether the headline and story are fair to Restaurant Brands.