Would Dagny file a sexual harrassment claim against Hank?

[Selene]

In light of the current issue of the two (2) claimants and Herman Cain during his tenure as President of the National Restaurant Association during the 1990's, I would like to raise the issue of sexual harrassment in the work place and whether it has validity in an objectivist context.

First, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which defines sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when:

• Submission is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of employment, or
  
• An employee's submission to or rejection of the conduct is a basis for employment decisions, or
  
• Such conduct unreasonably interferes with work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
  

Additionally, this conduct covers a wide range of situations and whether a certain interaction between employees is sexual harassment depends on the case. Examples include:

• Sexual jokes or stories
  
• Hugging or kissing
  
• Staring at someone
  
• Sexual gestures or signals
  
• Massages
  
• Whistling at someone
  
• Making sexual e-mails or phone calls
  
• Spreading rumors about someone's sex life
  
• Touching a person's body, hair or clothes
  
• Giving inappropriate gifts
  

One of the two (2) individuals who are being mentioned with Herman Cain received, in a confidential settlement, a "five figure" severance package.

According to the NY Times, the five figure settlement amounted to $35, 000.00 dollars for the one year severance package. http://www.nytimes.c...ay.html?_r=1

Four people with contemporaneous knowledge of the encounter said it had taken place in the context of a work outing during which there had been heavy drinking — a hallmark, they said, of outings with an organization that represents the hospitality industry. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly drawn into the dispute, and declined to provide details of the encounter, saying they did not want to violate the privacy of the woman.

Two of them said that other factors had been involved in her severance, and that other workplace issues had been making her unhappy at the association as well. But they said the encounter with Mr. Cain had added an emotional charge and contributed to the size of her payment. One former colleague familiar with the details said such a severance was not common, especially for an employee with the woman’s relatively short tenure and her pay grade.

This is an interesting number because it dovetails with the industry standard in sexual harrassment litigation which has been a minimum of $35, 000.00.

As one law firm that specializes in sexual harrassment litigation explicitly stated, it costs $35, 000.00 for our firm to open it's briefcases to defend a corporation against a sexual harrassment claim.

It is the exposure to the cost of the litigation that causes a cost estimate solution to this type of claim. Additionally, as attorneys that I work with explained to me, it is usually the plaintiff who insists on the non-disclosure sections of the settlement because the plaintiff does not want the filing of the claim to prevent the plaintiff from being fairly considered for future employment.

My question to OL is whether this is a legitimate claim in an objectivist sense of law.

Secondly, to the few independent women who post on OL,is:

1) does sexual harrassment in the workplace legitimately exist, or is it harrassment and needs no specific categorical modification;

2) have you ever experienced it, or observed it in the workplace; and

3) would you file the claim?.

As a male, who has worked for women and had women who worked for me, I have never been concerned with the issue because I have not been accused of the violation and whenever I have been the recipient of some of the behavior described in the EEOC statement, I would never even consider filing a claim because of my sense of life and my sense of the workplace.

Adam

seeking a workplace that will fondle the ego...

[Mikee]

How do you know that "sexual advances" are unwelcome before you actually make one?

[Selene]

Mikee:

I am not going to touch that question!

I just learned some important information about the state of sexual harrassment EEOC claims in the 1990's.

First and foremost, at that time, a "feeling of being made uncomfortable" was sufficient to make a claim under the Federal Tittle and the EEOC.

Since that time, the level of substantiating a claim has gotten significantly higher in terms of presenting evidence of solid probative value.

Additionally, a claim raised against Herman Cain would have been handled completely by the NRA's [National Restaurant Association] insurance company's attorneys.

Mr. Cain would never have even been notified of the charges and at that time, this would have been at the level of a nuisance or slip and fall claim and would be settled and made to go away immediately.

Adam

[john42t]

My question to OL is whether this is a legitimate claim in an objectivist sense of law.

I believe the law is evil.

Private people should be allowed to make contracts in any way they wish, including sexual services.

Within a company, it's the employer's liberty to define rules of conduct. The state should have no say in the matter.

[Selene]

My, my this is starting to really look like a very weak position with no substance. Essentially, her lips are saying no, NO, NO, but there's yes, yes in her eyes**... makes for good jazz, but shitty legality!

“She’s not going to affirmatively make any public statements or public appearances about the case, everything will be through me,” Mr. Bennett said. “She has a life to live and a career, and she doesn’t want to become another Anita Hill.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/pollster-describes-tells-of-suggestive-behavior-by-cain/?emc=na

**http://youtu.be/Fue15nGgGNg

[9thdoctor]

One thing I’ve seen people do is, if they expect to be fired for whatever reason, they make a sexual harassment claim. Once they do this you can’t fire them, because then they can claim it was retaliation. At the very least it buys them time. This strategy works with discrimination claims as well.

[john42t]

One thing I’ve seen people do is, if they expect to be fired for whatever reason, they make a sexual harassment claim. Once they do this you can’t fire them, because then they can claim it was retaliation. At the very least it buys them time. This strategy works with discrimination claims as well.

How many of those people weren't women?

[9thdoctor]

One thing I’ve seen people do is, if they expect to be fired for whatever reason, they make a sexual harassment claim. Once they do this you can’t fire them, because then they can claim it was retaliation. At the very least it buys them time. This strategy works with discrimination claims as well.

How many of those people weren't women?

I don't work in HR, so I wouldn't know about all the cases. In my career I know of one accusation of sexual harassment by a man, and it was against another man. I had to be interviewed about it as a witness, so I'll share a detail or two. The guy was reprimanded by his supervisor for his work, and within a day he sent a letter to HR with a sexual harassment claim. The content of it was this: months earlier the subordinate was talking in the lunchroom about the Robert Redford movie where he offers Demi Moore $1M to sleep with him. He loudly boasts how he would happily sleep with anyone for $1M. Supervisor (jokingly?) asks if he would sleep with a man for $1M.

And that's it, that was sexual harassment. HR said they couldn't fire the subordinate and before long, the supervisor left the company. Far as I know he wasn't gay, neither of them was gay.

[john42t]

And that's it, that was sexual harassment. HR said they couldn't fire the subordinate and before long, the supervisor left the company. Far as I know he wasn't gay, neither of them was gay.

Wow. You are really nuts over there. :-)

[9thdoctor]

And that's it, that was sexual harassment. HR said they couldn't fire the subordinate and before long, the supervisor left the company. Far as I know he wasn't gay, neither of them was gay.

Wow. You are really nuts over there. :-)

Yeah, well what part of Germany are you from? I have stories from your homeland too...actually none quite as good as this one though.

[john42t]

Yeah, well what part of Germany are you from? I have stories from your homeland too...actually none quite as good as this one though.

Ruhr valley, that's near the Netherlands. Sexuality is very relaxed here (again, feminism is wearing off). Companies can even pay prostitutes for salesmen as incentive and get away with it (this is still an exception though).

[Selene]

Yeah, well what part of Germany are you from? I have stories from your homeland too...actually none quite as good as this one though.

Ruhr valley, that's near the Netherlands. Sexuality is very relaxed here (again, feminism is wearing off). Companies can even pay prostitutes for salesmen as incentive and get away with it (this is still an exception though).

Wow...really relaxed...what's the difference between a salesman and a prostitute?

[9thdoctor]

Companies can even pay prostitutes for salesmen as incentive and get away with it (this is still an exception though).

I heard of someone once putting "POA" on an expense report. What's POA, did they need to get a Power of Attorney? Nope, POA = piece of ass. Reimbursement denied? Nope, it was the owner's expense report.

[Selene]

One of the great stories of the unification of allied science and military operations in WWII.

The Dambusters...excellent movie about the destruction of the Ruhr Valley industrial dams with a skipping bomb which was designed from the concept that all boys understand skipping a stone across a body of water.

It is fair to say that the operation to destroy the German dams in the Ruhr began on Tuesday July 26th 1938 at a meeting chaired by Air Vice Marshall W. Sholto Douglas, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff. This was a meeting of the RAF Bombing Committee and one of the main items on the agenda was to bring to the meetings attention, a potential weak point in the German industrial economy. This potential weakness was a number of reservoirs that supplied power and water to manufacturing industries which in the time of war would be turned over to war manufacture. The object of the meeting was to enquire into the extent to which effective air action against the Dams of the reservoirs until similar targets would be possible. Bombing Committee paper number 16 was circulated and this document described the types of construction and siting of the Dams along with notes on the potential damage that was caused by a number of the air dropped weapons then available. Squadron leader C G Burge representing the Air Targets Sub-Committee of Aerial Intelligence reported that the amount of water consumed in the whole of Germany was only three times that of the Ruhr and that the bulk of it was obtained from one large reservoir contained by a single large dam known as the Möhne Dam. He added that there were also four or five other reservoirs in Germany which fed the inland waterways. The destruction of which was likely to leave the waterways high and dry which would severely effect the German transportation system. It also seemed reasonable to believe that the damage caused would be extremely difficult to put right.

http://www.dambusters.org.uk/index.html <<<<Great website!

The Dams Raid

The Bouncing Bomb

Wallis was still faced with the problem of placing his hypothetical explosive charge against the wet face of the dam. It has been known since the dawn of artillery that cannon balls could be ricocheted off the surface of the sea and this technique had been used for years to extend the range of black powder guns. Although German physicists in the early 1900?s had identified and quantified the physics of bouncing solid objects off water it was not until Barnes Wallis turned his formidable intellect to the problem that it was proved back spin greatly extended the range of this ricocheting projectiles. Wallis by careful experimentation proved the "Magnus effect" whereby the spinning object is effectively given aerodynamic lift and the number of bounces thereby increasedThe Dams Raid

The Bouncing Bomb

Wallis was still faced with the problem of placing his hypothetical explosive charge against the wet face of the dam. It has been known since the dawn of artillery that cannon balls could be ricocheted off the surface of the sea and this technique had been used for years to extend the range of black powder guns. Although German physicists in the early 1900?s had identified and quantified the physics of bouncing solid objects off water it was not until Barnes Wallis turned his formidable intellect to the problem that it was proved back spin greatly extended the range of this ricocheting projectiles. Wallis by careful experimentation proved the "Magnus effect" whereby the spinning object is effectively given aerodynamic lift and the number of bounces thereby increased

[RightJungle]

As one of the "independent women" who sometimes posts here: When I was younger I was frequently the object of "attention" in male dominated businesses - and not just by the men either. It didn't bother me at all at the time - I just dealt with it by physically dodging an unwanted pat, or making a comeback joke that showed me to be a player rather than a victim. There may also have been a certain amount of unrealistic conceit on my part that translated into "The poor fellas just couldn't help themselves." In time I got over that conceit.

I was just over 40 years of age when Anita Hill made her complaint against Clarence Thomas. At the time I was surprised that she would make such a complaint a matter of public discussion. I felt embarassed for her because I thought that she looked weak and stupid in her victim pose. Maybe given her race and gender and the times there was more at play there than I realized.

A couple of years later, during my stint as a project manager, I received training in handling sexual harrassment situations. Much to my surprise the opportunity to practice my training arose when my best male system architect became the target of a married woman's crush. He was being harrassed by personal visits and phone calls during work by this woman who also reported to me. He didn't want to create a problem for the project, but she was making his life pretty miserable. To make matters worse, he was falling in love with another woman from another work group and didn't want to draw attention to himself in that situation. When he brought the problem to me, I turned it over to HR and consented to having the intractible woman transferred to another group within the company.

When the system architect and I were having a post mortem discussion about what had happened he was very shaken by what had befallen him. He thought that the public attention paid to the subject of sexual harrassment had actually increased the awareness of all concerned and made settling the issue much more difficult than it might otherwise have been. Well, maybe.

As a general rule a person should appeal to a higher authority within the organization to help with a "personnel" problem only when she thinks that her ability to do her work is at stake or that others within the company are under threat, and that she is not equipped to deal with it on her own. In regard to sexual harrassment - real or imagined - I could be wrong, but I see very little in relationships between men and women that does not have some amount of sexual awareness involved. Life's lesson: You may not be able to keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.

Sex is certainly not at the root of all or even most conflicts at work. Each of us is responsible for our own well being at work or at play. We must assume the responsibility of using our own discernment to recognize the difference between playful or inappropriate behavior and threatening behavior. Having made that discernment, if the behaviour is not threatening respond accordingly and move on. You're at work after all. If it is threatening, and you are not John Wayne, get help from HR as quickly as possible to avoid a regrettable outcome.

[Selene]

Mary Lee:

Excellent post.

Perfectly on point.

Adam