|
What Would You Do?
Thanks to the fine writing of Clara
Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, I was mesmerized as I read Class
Action: The Story of Lois Jensen and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual
Harassment Law. No matter what organization you know well, the story in Class
Action could apply to you. If you manage a remote location, you may think
twice about what you know about the workplace environment. If you’ve been
made aware of an employee’s concerns, your actions become critical. The
workplace at Eveleth Miles described in this book provides executives and
managers with a clear understanding of how the work of leadership requires
engagement, involvement, and action rooted in values that include respect for
each individual.
Here’s an excerpt:
“In the Meritor
case, in which the Supreme Court first recognized that the existence of a
hostile work environment could be a form of sex discrimination, the Court had
made clear that a company could be liable for a hostile work environment if
it had not adopted and implement an anti-sexual harassment policy. Up until
now, most of Sprenger & Lang’s discovery had focused on what had happened
in the mine. Now it was time to try to find out what the company had known
about what was going on at the mine, and what, if anything, it had tried to
do about it.
The first step was to depose in Cleveland members of Oglebay Norton’s senior
management who were responsible for managing Eveleth Mines. … (Jane) Lang
started with William Ruf, Oglebay’s vice president of industrial relations
and personnel, who was accompanied by Erickson. Ruf explained that he set the
company’s general EEOC policy statements, but that responsibility for
enforcing those policies and responding to employee complaints belongs to the
company’s top EEOC person. …
When Lang asked Ruf what Oglebay Norton’s policy was toward sexual harassment
he replied, ‘We are against it.’ But he admitted that the policy had never
been communicated to Eveleth Mines or any other subsidiary, even though the company
was concerned that there might be sexual harassment of its female employees
when it began hiring women in the mining operations. Ruf explained that he
did not think a formal written policy was necessary, because ‘to be it was
common sense.’
Ruf admitted that the company was aware that there had been complaints about
sexual harassment from time to time at Eveleth, but ‘I did not feel [they]
were cases where women were being discriminated against. It was the use of
sexual overtones or things of that nature – Playboy pictures on the
wall, for instance, those kinds of things that the woman found objectionable,
but I don’t think they were directed at sexual harassment or at trying to prevent
them from being promoted.’ Ruf said he toured the Eveleth sites on average
twice a year. Lang asked if he saw photographs ‘of a sexual nature’ on the
walls or bulletin boards during those tours.
‘If you say that Playboy is
sexual in nature, yes.’ But, he added, there was no problem with that kind of
thing ‘unless they were objected to by somebody.’ But when Lang showed him
the exhibits that Troth had shown to the other men, Ruf seemed genuinely
surprised. He said that if he had seen them, he would have ‘personally’ taken
them down, and agreed that someone in authority should have done so.
‘And why is that, sir?’ Lang asked.
‘Well, they are crude, objectionable,
I can’t … I don’t know how many words you want me to put to them, but they
are totally tasteless.’
‘Do you believe that they constitute
sexual harassment?’
‘Yes,’ Ruf admitted.
The next day, Lang deposed Robert Thomas Green, Oglebay Norton’s vice
president of Iron Ore Operations. The fifty-two-year-old Green was typical of
Oglebay Norton senior management: He had never lived on the Range. He had
grown up in Ohio, where he attended a private prep school before going on to
Amgerst College in Massachusetts.
Like Ruf and Gilmore, Green took the position that he had been unaware that
there was a problem with sexually explicit materials and language at Eveleth.
Although he toured the mines once or twice a year, he focused on production
and costs, and did not have any direct contact with the laborers. He had not
seen any inappropriate pictures or calendars, but admitted that, before the
lawsuit was filed, he was not looking for them. He did say that on a visit to
Eveleth a month earlier, having been made aware of the case, he noticed ‘a
calendar of a gal. Being aware of this, I mentioned that I thought that was
inappropriate. … She wasn’t naked or anything, but it was other than in
proper taste.’
Bemused, Lang replied, ‘Well, I am glad your consciousness has been raised,
sir.’ Green said, ‘Well, it has been,’ whereupon Erickson strenuously objected
and demanded that the comments be stricken from the record.
When Lang showed the photo exhibits, Green said that he had never seen them.
‘Is the posting of such pictures in
office of foremen compatible with Oglebay Norton Company’s policy of equal
employment opportunity? Land asked.
‘You see,’ Green replied, ‘I don’t
know of our policy with respect to that. I am just talking about common
decency.’
A hint of class bias seeped through much of Green’s testimony, as it did
through that of other senior management. From their pristine, no-frills
headquarters, they seemed to view what happened in the mines with
paternalistic detachment. While the exhibits they were shown offended their
social sensibilities, they viewed the fact that they were displayed in the
mines as inappropriate departures from ‘proper taste’ and ‘common decency,’
rather than a potential violation of employees’ civil rights.”
As you read Class
Action, think about what you would have done had you been an executive or
a worker at Eveleth Mines.
Steve Hopkins, August 14, 2002
|
