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ISOLATED INCIDENTS?
APRIL 26, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Complaints of sexual harrassment by women at a Mitsubishi automotive plant in Illinois have prompted an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and a number of law suits. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW Chicago reports.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Looming over the farm fields in Central Illinois, the Mitsubishi auto plant seems oddly out of place. Forty-two hundred people work at the plant, producing close to eight hundred cars a day. It's the largest employer in the small town of Normal. But now, there are charges that what was going on inside the plant was not normal at all. Twenty-seven-year-old Sandra Rushing spent two years on a production line in the plant. She says she left in disgust in 1991.
SANDRA RUSHING, Former Mitsubishi Worker: Not only did they touch me. They used their wrenches, you know, umm, and their air guns and that was just, in the front of my mind, I knew that they were going to be doing something when I got there and will I make it through this day or, how am I going to make it?
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What did they do with the wrenches and the air gun?
SANDRA RUSHING: In-between my legs. They'd pretend like they were extensions of themselves. That was one thing they really liked doing because we have very large wrenches there, good-sized wrenches, and they just thought that was hilarious.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: This woman still works at the auto assembly plant. Afraid for her job, she did not want her identity known.
WOMAN: I was slapped on the butt. The person used, got a banana and put it in his mouth and things like that, you know, insinuations, things like that, in front of a group, a group that I worked in.
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: (going to work) I'm late. I'm late. I'm late.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: About 20 percent of the plant's employees are women. Jeannette Potrzeba works on the production line with 17 men. She says she's never experienced any sexual harassment.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Have any of the men ever teased or done anything that some other people might think of as sexual harassment would you say?
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: Not to my knowledge. I mean, yeah, we all laugh and joke and try to have a good time, but I don't know if they would construe it as sexual harassment. I'm with these guys, you know, eight hours a day. I get to see them more than my family, and, uh, it's very tight-knit.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Civil rights attorney Patricia Benassi says there may have been some areas of the plant where women were not harassed. But the stories brought to her by 30 women were so disturbing she filed a lawsuit against the company in December of 1994.
PATRICIA BENASSI, Lawyer: People in that plant a lot of times don't know what constitutes sexual harassment. Up until very recently, and I'm talking within the last 12 months, there was no training, so women who work in an environment where they hear the word "bitch," where they see sexual graffiti written on the fenders of cars as they come through, where they see dirty jokes, where they see pornographic pictures, where they might hear statements such as "women don't belong here," where they might be subjected to an environment of retaliation just because they're a female, often don't identify that as sexual harassment.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The women's charges prompted at 15-month investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Chicago office. On April 9th, the EEOC filed a class action lawsuit, charging Mitsubishi with sexual harassment. Women could be eligible for up to $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, meaning a tab of several hundred million dollars for the company. John Rowe heads the EEOC's Chicago office.
JOHN ROWE, EEOC, Chicago District Office: There were hundreds of instances of sexual harassment, that is, harassing conduct. But that covers a whole wide spectrum of activities from graffiti on walls and on parts of cars to physical contact of an unwelcome kind. In one way or another, we do believe that the, that the individuals harmed by this conduct number in the hundreds.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mitsubishi declined our request for an on-camera interview, but off-camera, company spokesperson Gary Shultz admitted to isolated incidents of sexual harassment but said the company had a zero tolerance policy which had been effective in deterring such behavior since the day the plant opened.
SANDRA RUSHING: They're liars, just flat out lying. I know that they've changed and have fired some people, but not that I saw. They didn't care in some areas. So long as the work was getting done, they didn't care what went on.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The lawsuits triggered a strong response from Mitsubishi employees. Last Monday, 2700 workers took a three-hour bus trip to Chicago to show their support for the company.
DEMONSTRATORS: EEOC doesn't represent me. EEOC doesn't represent me.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Wearing their Mitsubishi maroon shirts and chanting in front of the EEOC's
office, Jeannette Potrzeba and her female co-workers said they wanted no part of the class action lawsuit.
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: I don't want them to file on behalf of me because I've not experienced it.
ANNA ROGERS: We basically asked them to handle it on an individual case by case situation instead of a class action because we don't feel that really represents the working force at Mitsubishi.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The men at the march also felt unfairly targeted.
DON KRAFT: I myself feel like I've been tried and convicted already through the media and through what the EEOC has put out.
BRUCE HENRICKS: Any place you go people say, oh, those are those guys over there that harass the women. It's not right. It's not right.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mitsubishi paid for buses, provided lunch, and a day's pay, but most insisted they were not pressured to join the rally.
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: It was actually employees that put this all together. It had--the company supported it, of course, umm, which is great, and, uh, we're all very excited to come up.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Employees had attended an organizing meeting at the plant before the rally. Company vice president Gary Shultz told the crowd:
GARY SHULTZ: We've got to win the media by parading thousands strong in Chicago. We'll paint Chicago maroon that day.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Some employees interpreted this as pressure; others did not. Troy O'Hare felt pressure, but he stayed behind, angry over the sexual harassment he had seen in the plant.
TROY O'HARE: There was some sexual harassment that happened there and it wasn't dealt with correctly. I didn't go on the rally because I didn't want to be put in that predicament where they were saying that I stood up for them and said they're not guilty.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: O'Hare and others who didn't go had to report to work.
TROY O'HARE: There was probably 25 people in there that had stayed behind and we all had sexual harassment training while all the buses left, so I don't know if that was their idea of poking fun at us or not.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Had you had any sexual harassment training at the plant before the day of the rally?
TROY O'HARE: No.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But O'Hare, like most others, did worry about the effect of the negative press on car sales.
(MITSUBISHI AD)
BRUCE HENRICKS: I think it could very well possibly have, you know, an effect on sales, very much so. And, uh, naturally, if we don't sell 'em, we don't build 'em. Just straight pure and simple.
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: I earn every penny that I make but I don't think I could find anything that pays that well now.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: And so that's--is that one reason you're fighting so hard?
JEANNETTE POTRZEBA: Yes.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Rowe says the EEOC is sensitive to the importance of the Mitsubishi plant to the central Illinois area.
JOHN ROWE: The fact is that the EEOC has not put employers out of business with civil rights claims. We try to distinguish. In a case like this, we believe that numerous women were victimized by violations of federal law. We do not believe that the corporation is the victim here.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Despite the investigation and the lawsuits, plaintiffs say the harassment at the plant has continued. It was recently revealed that for years plans had been made at the plant for off-site sex parties. Prostitutes were hired and pictures were taken.
PATRICIA BENASSI: And after the parties were held, these pictures were brought back and they were spread all over, all over the break areas. They were available for people to take what they wanted. They were made a part of the working areas, and, uh, pornography in the work place is part of sexual harassment. It's a green light to people who don't, you know, who have a proclivity to engage in sexual harassment anyway.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Half of the women in the private lawsuit still work at the plant. Some have experienced serious retaliation. One woman found the front door to her home bashed in and this death threat stuffed in her locker at work. Anne Ladky heads a Chicago group that has long supported women in the work place.
ANNE LADKY, Women Employed: In our experience of watching these cases and supporting women who file them, the costs to the women who file the complaint are exceedingly, exceedingly high, and I wish that weren't the case. But it is. Women report extreme levels of stress, of depression.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Stress is also high for management. The home of the director for human resources for Mitsubishi burned to the ground the night after he spoke to workers about the upcoming Chicago rally. There are no suspects, but police say the cause was arson. For some, the stress was too great. Sandra Rushing chose to walk away.
SANDRA RUSHING: That walk was so much freedom--it's like, oh thank you--no more, I'm through. It felt so good.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It could take years to bring either case to trial unless Mitsubishi decides to settle out of court. Yesterday, Japanese executives in both Tokyo and Normal indicated an interest in settling, but no negotiations have been scheduled.
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