CHICAGO Sexual harassment complaints are on the rise

A Chicago-based company faces complaints from about 135 women.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Elke Budreau was 19 years old and had been a sales agent only a month at Combined Insurance Co. of America when she attended her first company-sponsored conference. Budreau will always remember the meeting, but not for the sales techniques she learned.
At that meeting, she was sexually assaulted by her district manager and four other men employed by Combined, she alleges in a sexual harassment claim filed against the company. Later, some of them paid for the abortion they insisted she have, according to her complaint.
Combined, a unit of Chicago-based Aon Corp., faces complaints from about 135 women alleging harassment and discrimination. Filings in U.S. District Court here describe women being assaulted, grabbed, propositioned and frozen out of promotions. They allege they were paid less than their male counterparts, given lesser assignments and laughed at when they told supervisors about inappropriate treatment.
Maria Eason, 49, worked at the company for 14 years. During that time, she said, she had to endure dirty jokes, comments about her breasts and the frustration of being regularly passed up for more choice assignments. One manager told her he was taking her to a staff meeting, but instead drove her to a strip bar, according to her complaint. Another time a boss told her to stop by his hotel room to pick up some materials she needed. When he opened the door, the man was standing there naked, she said.
"He might have had a shirt on," she said from her home in Alabama. "But I know he didn't have his pants and underwear on."
Attorneys for the women are asking the court to approve class-action claims for former and current workers.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act nearly 40 years ago, guaranteeing, among other things, that workers can't be discriminated against because of their gender. For more than a generation women have steadily increased their representation in all parts of the workplace. Sessions in how not to harass are now common parts of workplace training.
Plenty of cases
But lawyers who represent people who claim harassment say there is still plenty of work to keep them busy.
"We see absolutely outrageous allegations of sexual harassment, from the highest offices of the biggest companies to the factory floors," said John Hendrickson, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regional attorney. He led the case against Dial Corp. that alleged sexual harassment at its plant near Aurora, Ill.
Dial admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed April 29 to pay $10 million and let monitors into its soap plant, where about 100 women filed complaints.
It was the largest settlement since Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America paid $34 million in 1998 in a sexual harassment case that the EEOC had brought against the carmaker's plant in Normal, Ill.
Nationally, the number of sexual harassment or discrimination complaints filed with federal and state agencies increased nearly 17 percent from 1992 through 2002.
The EEOC takes to court only a fraction of the cases brought to it. Many workers, like the Combined employees, sue on their own. The problems extend from factories to Wall Street.
The EEOC has accused brokerage firm Morgan Stanley of discriminating against more than 100 women. In early May, the commission told a federal judge that settlement talks collapsed.
In March, investment banking firm J.P. Morgan Chase dismissed two employees, among them a managing director, after another worker reported the pair had made inappropriate advances on a J.P. Morgan employee in a bar. Also this year, a Bank of America Corp. analyst sued her employer, alleging she was harassed and denied promotions.
Many harassment complaints are resolved by supervisors. But Combined Insurance employees claim there was no one they could turn to.
In 1998, a pair of U.S. Supreme Court decisions clarified what factors are necessary to prove sexual harassment.
"After these cases, all these law firms make all this money doing training, saying, 'This is what you have to do, employer, to cover yourself,"' said Katharine Baker, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
That legal advice has resulted in specific anti-harassment policies. But, Baker added, the court has made clear that a company can have a policy in place, but if the only person a victim can report concerns to is the one causing problems, the company could be in trouble.