Before David Letterman had his late night show on NBC, and before Bill O'Reilly was bloviating on Fox News, I got to see Sexual Harrassment first hand.
I worked as a Security Supervisor at construction site in New Hampshire where a Nuclear Power Plant was being built. It was the largest construction project in New Hampshire. At its peak, over 10,000 people worked three shifts to get it built.
Construction workers have a reputation (right, wrong, or indifferent) for being foul mouthed, alcohol guzzling, perverts. In the trailers that doubled as offices, nude pictures of Miss January and her colleagues hung from the walls. It would be difficult to hear anyone complete a sentence without the "f" word being uttered. It was a male domain and a rough and tumble place.
The unions, which hired skilled craftspeople (operating engineers, teamsters, carpenters, ironworkes, pipefitters, millwrights, electricians, painters, and laborers) were entering an age of enlightenment.
Women began to appear on the job site in the roles of apprentices and or craftspeople. Certainly women worked adminstrative and office roles, but they were inside and weren't exposed to construction workers.
This was a novelty to many of the construction workers. The women craftspeople took a lot of abuse. Some of the abuse was the notion that women were taking jobs away from men. Other incidents included cat calls, pranks, and vandalizing the work women had completed.
It finally came to a head when a male carpenter continously fondled and harrassed a young woman who was an apprentice carpenter.
This young woman loved to work with her hands. All she wanted to was come to work and do her job. She also happened to be a stunningly beautiful woman. She could have had a career as a fashion model as she was tall and thin. Most of all she was competent. She was respected by her foreman, and his general foreman.
The man who was harassing her, had been "counseled" several times. He went too far one day when he fondled her breasts and buttocks. The woman told him to stop several times, and when he refused to do so, took her framing hammer and broke his arm in two places.
This all came to my attention as I had to write up the incident report that went up the chain to senior construction management. As she and I sat to take her statement, I could see the humiliation in her eyes as she described what happened. She was really defensive as she said, "I kept telling him to stop and he wouldn't."
In my role I really just had to collect her version, and remain neutral, but inside, I thought she was justified in trying to protect herself. I wondered if she would be fired, because the man who assaulted her had been a union carpenter for almost 15 years. He was married with 5 kids, and his wife was a stay at home mom.
The incident was reviewed by management and they rendered what I thought (in retrospect) was an interesting decision given the work environment and the times.
First, they took no disciplinary action against the woman. She was trying to defend herself. This sent a message across the construction project that this type of harrassment would not be tolerated. No action would be taken against any woman who tries to defend herself.
The male carpenter was suspended from work at the site permanently and because of his broken arm was unable to work for almost two months. He tried to file a worker's compensation claim, but it was rejected because his injury was not job related. He lost wages for two months (carpenters did not receive sick pay under this contract). He had to explain to his wife and family what had happened.
The outcome of this incident was that all sexual harrassment on the project ended. Permanently. Zero tolerance. In 1981.
So what does this have to do with Letterman and O'Reilly? O'Reilly settled a lawsuit a few year back because of his alleged sexual harrassment of an employee. He's still working. His employers Fox News, condoned his alleged behavior.
Letterman has received praise for his recent broadcasts, and is viewed, by many, as a "victim." He still continues to work. I'll say that his PR tactics have been marvelously effective, but O'Reilly and he are just as much at fault, as the carpenter is.
I'm shouldn't be surprised by the hypocrisy, but I admit, I am. Both these clowns should be off the air. As the alleged extortionist, he is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Let's hear his story, please.
CNN reports the National Organization of Women (NOW) is calling out Letterman for his behavior.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/07/letterman.now/index.html
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Comments
Thank you for this: a voice of reason among the rush to give Letterman all the love. Feminism is dead and buried.
Most sexual harassment policies do not give exemptions for "consensual relationships." What is considered consensual in the moment can become harassment later on down the line.
However, I'm not totally sure that what Letterman did is actually sexual harassment. From what I've read of the statements of the one woman who has come forward so far she states that she was in love with Letterman and it was a consensual relationship lasting over a year. No one has come forward to say that they were pressured into having a relationship with him because he was their boss. Most of Letterman's relationships, including the one with his wife, started in the workplace - as a number of people's relationships do. I don't think we're in a place to pass judgment on this until someone comes forward and makes a claim of harassment.
The extortionist, on the other hand, stole his ex-girlfriend's diary and made copies of it and tried to use it to get money. He was caught taking a fake check for $2 million. He deserves his day in court, of course, but given what information we do have his behaviour seems far more like exploitation of the women in this situation than does Letterman's.
R
(fist in the air) for the hammer retort. hope his arm still hurts.
-r-
It takes advantage of subordinate employees and much can go awry if an office romance goes south. All I know is what Letterman says is his truth.
Deborah -- Bob Packwood (R) got away with a lot because of his political leanings of left of center. I know we are on different sides of the fence politically sometimes, but if my daughters were put in this type of position where they work, I would care less their boss's political ideology. Thanks for the supporting comment.
The woman carpenter's shame and humiliation was a significant emotional event in my life and as I grew in managerial roles I was always aware that if a woman is feeling like she's being harrassed, her perception is her reality. I never saw a woman ever try to manipulate the system, ever.
VG -- thanks ever so much.
Patricia -- I understand your reserving judgment. I think Deborah and Voicegal share my perspective on this.
Surly -- I always wondered what became of her. I'm sure she was a success in whatever she chose to do. She did garner the respect of the peers. I wish her well.
John -- I am with you. It's just not worth it when the relationship ends, and both people have to see each other at work everyday. When I was single, I never, ever asked anyone I worked with to go out. It may sound silly to some, but I've seen some real nightmare scenarios, that led to lawsuits and terminations.
MTK -- If Letterman's production company has a contract with CBS to produce the show, then it's Letterman signing the checks. If Katie Couric was having an affair with some production assistant, it's just as wrong. Thanks for your comments.
If you're the boss, and you tell your subordinates that they have to have sex with you or they're fired, that's sexual harrassment. If you're the boss and you tell your subordinates that if they have sex with you you'll give them a promotion, that's sexual harrassment. If you're the boss and you try to pimp out your subordinates, that's sexual harrassment. If you make obscene comments, get grabby, hassle someone to go out with you after you're asked to stop, etc. that's sexual harrassment.
Pretty much everything else is just people being people. I don't like the idea that women can't consent to sex with a higher-up because of the power differential. Adult women can make up their own minds about whether they sleep with the boss or not and can deal with the fallout.
As for the "fair game" argument, it's been my experience that the type of boss that considers his female employees "fair game" will do so regardless of whether ANY of them are actually sleeping with him, and the type of boss that won't, won't.
I know nothing about Letterman. Seriously, I'm not really interested in the gossip or his show. Ditto on O'Reilly. But about workplace romance/sex/etc I can say this: if you're screwing around while at work, then you should be demoted, fired or fined (a lot) simply because you are wasting company time/money and are showing extremely poor judgment.
I think there's a fundamental disconnect here about what constitutes genuine "harassment." Letterman is "the boss" but not in the usual sense. He's "the talent," insulated by executive producers and producers from his own company and CBS. He doesn't hire or fire. Those who work around him know he wants nothing to do with that. Could he insist on someone being fired? He could, but he has no history of it. And no complaints about his behavior, except his excessive desire for privacy, in and out of the workplace.
Letterman wasn't groping women in the hallways, nobody's job was in jeopardy, real or imagined, he had a few relationships. From what I know of the players, he was likely not even the aggressor. And we still don't know, btw, if there was any adultery.
One third of marriages in this country result from people who met in the workplace. Including David and Regina Lasko Letterman.
The rest has been said by Travis, Cartouche and iamsurly.
When you work in an environment where there is any kind of special relationship between the "boss" and some employees, it makes for a difficult workplace. Relationships are more emotional than professional and it creates SO much hostility and unfairness.
When you're working in an environment where this goes on, just making yourself get up and go to work feels like a chore because everything just becomes toxic.
I'm glad you posted this and I liked the story even though I try to take a non-violant stand on things. This woman sounds like a heroine for woman's rights. Thanks for sharing.
Whether Letterman & O'Reilly should be in the same piece...the above statement certainly rings true. It should not be tolerated now that we are SO much more sophisticated in 2009!
So, this compares to F-wad and his nasty assed e-mails and falafels, how?
Great story, OE, and rated!
In the years between 1978 and 1981 I worked with lawyers who would talk about breasts in front of me when I entered a room. One lawyer had a sign hanging in his office that indicated in Yiddish the types of form a woman's body might take; I was told repeatedly, and inappropriately, that I was zoftig, as if that had anything to do with Securities law. Men's magazines were left laying about their personal offices with the pages open to nude photos. We were working on cases that affected the entire country. It was important work and I really liked some of the people I worked with very much. Others I had to dodge and avoid contact with as much as possible to maintain my self respect. They didn't touch me, they just made me feel like they wanted to touch me all the time.
One year, one of these lawyers gave me a Christmas gift that was a 14K gold, floating heart pendant necklace. The kind of gift a twenty-something young woman would expect from her boyfriend, husband, or lover. We were neither. I was a newlywed. It freaked me out and I left it on his desk when he wasn't in his office. I was not flattered.
Later when this honors graduate and increasingly powerful attorney went to the Department of Labor, his boss, a division head, asked me over for an interview. When I went in to this potential promotional interview I found him in the office. I was dumbstruck, I thought the inquiry was based upon qualifications, which they could have easily said to cover what motivated the interview, but his sitting there said everything. When he left the SEC, I didn't know where he had gone until that very moment. I felt stalked, but I didn't know that word for it yet.
And then there is the fellow who grabbed my ass and squeezed when I was a waitress. Did he not notice I had a full pot of hot coffee in my hand poised right over his lap? I spilled just enough for him to be as startled as I was by his inappropriate, invasive and disrespectful sexually harrassing behavior. Only a few weeks later I was promoted to shift manager. My manager knew I wouldn't allow the staff to be abused. OES, just as the management at your job protected this woman carpenter, and all women in their employ with their decision, the restaurant supported me and the other women in the restaurant.
When I worked for the SEC, there were policies but there wasn't the underlying understanding required for enforcement of standards. That, I think, is the problem.
We can't make it illegal for people to be attracted to one another and we can't stop them from acting on that attraction. We can set up laws, rules and guidelines to be followed but there are always the complications of real life that intervene. We can't treat subordinates as if they are powerless, it's disrespectful of their intelligence and their capacity and freedom to make their own moral and ethical choices. We can only govern how those choices involved impact the culture of the workplace. We can't assume we know what went on, we don't actually know.
Compared to what is alleged about Letterman's behavior, I don't get it as the same.
1. I believe someone would have formally complained, as I did all those many years ago. Someone would have exposed it and that did not happen.
2. Someone critical or jealous would have made a stink about it, remember, in entertainment there are plenty of outlets for an employee to make a killing with this kind of story, and yet, there is no evidence that happened.
3. Since sexual harrassment would be illegal behavior on Letterman's part, no contract of nondisclosure his company may require upon hiring of its employees would be binding against claims of illegal behavior.
So I don't believe there was harrassment until and unless someone proves it.
a) "quid pro quo:" promising work perks in response to sexual/romantic activity ("if you go out to dinner with me, I'll make sure you get the account")
b) "adverse work consequences" from refusing sexual activity (not getting a promotion because you refused to give the boss a bj)
c) or "hostile environment," where the employees' behavior (boss or equals) creates a work environment that makes it difficult for those being harassed to do their jobs. The activities of the harasser(s) could include remarks, fondling, posters, e-mails, websites, jokes, etc.
By my way of thinking, even if the relationship was consensual, Letterman could be guilty of b or c, depending on how his behavior affected the workplace.
It takes two to tango.
Lauded by whom? I am to the left of liberal, which is the U.S. is about the same as being right-wing in Canada, and I have fought long and hard my whole life against sexual harassment and for feminism. I don't give a damn who is doing the harassing, it is wrong. Period.
I also agree that when someone signs your pay cheque, it doesn't matter whether the sex is consensual. I do believe in personal responsibility however, and these adult women have surely heard that sleeping with the boss usually ends in tears -- their tears that is, or being fired. It's tougher when the boss is a celebrity because most of these interns/young workers have stars in their eyes, but whatever happened to common sense?
I've always thought Letterman was sexist -- he cannot interview a woman without being gauche after all these years in the business -- so I'm not all that surprised. What other reason would these mostly untalented and charmless (in the show biz sense) women be doing appearing live on his show?
We don't have good labor protections, period. When anyone can be fired for anything or nothing, regardless of how long they have worked somewhere or how much they have contributed, there is always the potential for abuse. I would be much happier to see people complaining about power differential between workers and bosses in general and proposing ways for that relationship to include some checks and balances. It's never made sense to me that you can work brilliantly for some company for 10 or 20 years and they can show you the door because a layoff will improve their bottom line. And yes, I've been sexually harassed and fired when a boss was finished with me sexually, and I know how hurtful that is. I've also laid off after many years from a job where I was recognized as a valuable employee for no other reason than to enrich some capitalist. That was worse and I didn't even get any dinners out of it.
No one has made any mention of Letterman fondling or harrassing women. He slept with women but there has been no mention of wrongdoing. Bill O'Reilley has been accused of harrassing and can better compare to your construction worker example...but Letterman, as of yet...cannot.
You should hold your guns and get the facts straight before you cut off Letterman's head...or break his arms with your hammer.
Sorry, but I think that organization lost all credibility to discuss imbalanced power situations and how they put women in vulnerable sexual situations based on their silence during the Lewinksy thing based PURELY on Clinton's politcal predispositions. I do not think he should have been impeached for it, but I was not that thrilled with impassioned defenses either.
What you are saying is that 1 person should not use their natural power to seduce another person of equal or slightly inferior power, when I actually think this is how all relationships work.
My parents have been together for almost 40 years now. Which was a mystery for a long time, because they barely have much in common, and I hardly even see them expressing physical affection to each other. After watching their relationship for my entire life, my conclusion is that they are still together because they respect each other. Why is that? They're about equally powerful. They have (roughly) equal sway over each other. They know roughly the same number of each others' buttons if they want to push them.
If you closely examine friendships, I'm sure you would observe something similar.
Charisma is power. Success is power. Intelligence is power. Fame is power. Physical strength is power. Youth is power. Beauty is power. Somewhere, where all these variables intersect, sex happens when rough power equalities happen. That's my take on this.
And it's a far cry from the more obvious form of sexual harassment.
Letterman is a popular entertainer by virtue of his supporters who commented here. O'Reilly has a popular following, too. As does Polanski and Governor Sanford and former President Clinton.
Workplace sex is risky sex. While Letterman's former sex partner says the sex was consensual we'll just have to take her word for it.
I worked for companies where women and men have received promotions because of their sexual relationships with the boss.
I guess the point I was trying to make was if you like a person, you view of their indiscretions is biased by the esteem you hold for them. For all of you who back up Letterman, would you demonstrate the same empathy and support if Rush Limbaugh made the exact same revelations on his show? I wonder.