Tagged: sexual harassment
“Kerry Washington will hang up her white hat temporarily when she stars as Anita Hill in HBO’s upcoming film Confirmation. The film centers on the explosive 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings, at which Anita Hill, his former assistant, testified about his repeated sexual harassment. The hearings brought the country to a standstill and forever changed the way people think about sexual harassment, victims’ rights and modern-day race relations….Confirmation debuts this April on HBO.”
They replaced Thurgood Marshall with this man?!? No wonder he typically votes with the white conservative, Republican appointed majority!! Thomas needs to be IMPEACHED!
Source: Kate Stanhope. “Kerry Washington Reveals Why She Was ‘Terrified’ to Play Anita Hill in HBO’s ‘Confirmation.'” The Hollywood Reporter. January 7, 2016. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/kerry-washington-reveals-why-she-853108.
“In an email sent to Sony’s top lawyer and other high ranking executives at the company, one former employee alleges a workplace of horrors, filled with sexual harassment, racism, verbal abuse and gender bias. An unnamed African-American woman who worked for Keith Le Goy, President of International Distribution at Sony Pictures Television, claims she and other African-American coworkers were passed over for promotions in favor of less experienced Caucasian employees, that she was the victim of frequent expletive-laden verbal attacks and she alleges that Le Goy sexually harassed her on multiple occasions.”
Is this guy “Jewish” or is he mixed? The dreads are throwing me off. Lol. I read this lady’s e-mails and she’s too detailed to be lying. This guy sounds like he’s a real douche. Even if he was the nicest boss in the world, it is clear that Sony’s employment practices, policies and procedures are creating a disparate impact against qualified African Americans from being hired and/or promoted to meaningful positions at Sony Pictures — like most of the studios, networks and talent agencies in Hollywood. Time for this woman to lawyer up (she probably already has) because she definitely has a case under Title VII, Section 1981, NYSHRL and NYCHRL!
Source: Chris Spargo. “Sony Employee Alleges Rampant Workplace Racism in Leaked Email Days After Studio Head Amy Pascal’s Racist Email Exchange About President Obama Went Public.” December 12, 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2871867/Sony-employee-alleges-rampant-workplace-racism-leaked-email-days-studio-head-Amy-Pascal-s-racist-email-exchange-President-Obama-went-public.html; See also, Sam Biddle. “Email Alleges Racism and Sexual Harassment Horror at Sony.” Gawker. December 12, 2014. http://gawker.com/leaked-email-alleges-racism-and-sexual-harassment-horro-1670318085.
NYT: “Arbitration Clauses Let American [Businesses] Hide Misconduct”
The real lesson from the ouster of Dov Charney at American Apparel is the danger of arbitration clauses.
That may not seem obvious given the bitter battle for control of the retailer and the accusations of sexual harassment.
But if American Apparel hadn’t been able to use arbitration and confidentiality clauses to keep investors and the public in the dark over those accusations, Mr. Charney would most likely have been shown the exit some years earlier.
By now, l’affaire Charney is well known. He founded the company and made the maker of tight-fitting shorts and shirts a retailing star with an in your face sexuality that apparently extended to the workplace.
In 2004, a female reporter from Jane magazine watched him engage in oral sex and then wrote about it. The article was full of quotes from Mr. Charney like, “Masturbation in front of women is underrated. ”
Ten years later, after Mr. Charney was fired, a number of commentators asked what took the board of American Apparel so long.
Joe Nocera wrote in a column in The New York Times that “both Charney and the American Apparel board of f er a case study in how not to
run a company” by allowing his conduct to go on for over a decade.But had the board not been so aggressive in using arbitration clauses to American Apparel’s advantage, it would have been forced to act years sooner.
The company required that all employees sign agreements requiring them to arbitrate any disputes, including sexual harassment claims.
The purpose of these clauses was clear: to ensure that any dispute was kept quiet and protect the company from excessive damages. It certainly didn’t appear to benefit employees.
American Apparel required that the entire proceeding — including the outcome — be kept confidential. Employees were also contractually barred from disparaging or otherwise say anything bad about Mr. Charney or American Apparel. As if this were not enough, employees also were required to agree not to speak to the news media without the approval of American Apparel.
In the same way arbitration agreements allow employers to hide misconduct such as sexual harassment, it achieves the same goal for employers who are intentionally violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and maintaining predominately all-white/”Jewish” workforces that are segregated by occupation.
To read more, click here: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/arbitration-clauses-let-american-apparel-hide-misconduct/.
New York City Human Rights Laws (“NYCHRL”)
I’m reading through the Plaintiff’s opposition to the Motion to Dismiss filed in the case which is discussed in the post below. Plaintiff’s counsel specifically argue:
The Civil Rights Restoration Act, N.Y.C. Local Law No. 85 (2005), amended the NYCHRL in 2005 to broaden its protections and expressly decouple interpretation of the statute from federal and state law:
In particular, through passage of this local law, the Council seeks to underscore that the provisions of New York City’s Human Rights Law are to be construed independently from similar or identical provisions of New York state or federal statutes. Interpretations of New York state or federal statutes with similar wording may be used to aid in interpretation of the New York City Human Rights Law, viewing similarly worded provisions of federal and state civil rights laws as a floor below which the City’s Human Rights law cannot fall, rather than a ceiling above which the local law cannot rise.
N.Y.C. Local Law No. 85, § 1 (2005) (emphasis added). In recognition of the 2005 amendment, the Second Circuit held on April 26, 2013 that NYCHRL claims must be analyzed separately from federal and state discrimination claims and that the federal courts must construe “the NYCHRL’s provisions broadly in favor of discrimination plaintiffs, to the extent that such a construction is reasonably possible,” Mihalik v. Credit Agricole Cheuvreux N. Am., Inc., — F.3d —, 2013 WL 1776643, at *5 (2d Cir. Apr. 26, 2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In doing so, the Second Circuit noted that despite the 2005 amendment, “district courts continued—erroneously—to apply federal standards to NYCHRL claims.” Id. at *4. The court went on to conclude that “even if the challenged conduct is not actionable under federal and state law, federal courts must consider separately whether it is actionable under the broader New York City standards.” Id. at *5 (citations omitted)…
New York state appellate courts have also recognized that the statute calls for an independent analysis of NYCHRL claims. See, e.g., Williams v. N.Y. City Housing Auth., 872 N.Y.S.2d 27, 37-38 (App Div. 1stDept. 2009). Further, the Southern District of New York had reached a similar conclusion, even prior to Mihalik. See, e.g., Fattoruso v. Hilton Grand Vacations Co., No. 12 Civ. 911 (KBF), 2012 WL 2102394, at *6 (S.D.N.Y. June 11, 2012).
Defendant’s brief seeks to mislead this Court to rely on New York state law, other states’ laws, and federal law, and analyze Ms. Wang’s hostile work environment claim in a manner which the Second Circuit has prohibited.
This indicates to me that there is a similar “pattern” of deceptive-like behavior used by attorneys representing corporations in employment discrimination cases, in which they completely misapply the law and raise legally insufficient defenses to help these companies maintain their unlawful employment practices, policies and procedures — hence the reason why after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we are still dealing with the same exact problems nearly 50 years later. Our legal system is pretty disgusting. Castel and other judges like him need to be impeached!
of course my biased judge — P. Kevin Castel — would decide that unpaid interns CANNOT be sexually harassed since they are not real “employees.” smh!!!
Law360, New York (October 07, 2013, 8:30 PM ET) — A federal judge ruled Thursday that a former unpaid intern could not sue a Hong Kong media conglomerate’s U.S. unit for sexual harassment under New York City law because it does not protect unpaid workers.
Ruling on a matter of first impression, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel found that the New York City Human Rights Law, as amended to provide broader protections in 2005, does not cover those in unpaid roles.
As such, the judge nixed former intern Lihuan Wang’s claim that Phoenix Satellite Television US Inc. — the American subsidiary for Phoenix Media Group, a Hong Kong-based company that produces television news geared toward Chinese-language audiences — unlawfully subjected her to a hostile work environment because a supervisor made unwanted sexual advances. Judge Castel left intact Wang’s claims that the company had violated the NYHRL and a New York state law by failing to hire her at the conclusion of her internship, allegedly because she had rejected those advances.
In nixing Wang’s hostile work environment claim, Judge Castel noted that under circuit law, unpaid workers are not considered employees under either Title VII or New York state law, and ultimately concluded that the city law worked the same way.
“I am not surprised that the judge ruled way he did,” M. Carter DeLorme of Jones Day, who represents Phoenix, told Law360. “Precedent is what it is, and all of the various federal and state employment laws go to great pains to describe what is covered and what employees are covered. It is pretty clear as of today that unpaid interns aren’t covered under either New York state or New York city human rights law.”
An attorney for Wang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wang, who worked for Phoenix as an intern while pursuing a master’s degree in the broadcast and digital journalism program at Syracuse University, claims in the suit that a supervisor visiting from out of town lured her to his hotel room and then made sexual advances toward her, which she rejected.
The two had work-related contact but did not discuss the incident further, according to the suit. However, after Wang rejected his sexual overtures, the supervisor no longer expressed an interest in hiring her after she completed her degree and instead began to stress that the company would not be able to sponsor Wang, a Chinese national, for a work visa, the suit claims.
When Wang contacted the supervisor to ask about working for Phoenix after graduation, he asked her to go with him to Atlantic City for the weekend “to discuss job opportunities,” according to the suit.
Fearful that he would sexually harass or sexually assault her, Wang claimed to have other plans and stopped seeking permanent employment with the company, the suit alleges.
Although the judge concluded that Wang could not bring her hostile work environment claim because the law only permits employees, and not unpaid interns, to pursue such claims, he rejected the company’s request for a dismissal of her failure to hire claims under the NYHRL and the NYSHRL.
So basically, in Castel’s mind, a company cannot be found liable for sexual harassment if the harassment occurs with interns who are not being paid by the company?? Does that line of reasoning also extend to racial discrimination? This Republican appointed, ideologically conservative white man is too pro-business and too pro-government to remain impartial in any employment discrimination and human rights related case. In my case, he saw nothing wrong with enforcing the pre-dispute, mandatory arbitration agreement of a company that has been engaging in a 115 year conspiracy, as well as pattern and continuing practice, of unlawful discrimination against African Americans. Due to his biased way of thinking and complete lack of empathy, he fails to acknowledge that the NYCHRL is supposed to be more expansive than the NYSHRL and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the 2005 Restoration Act states that provisions of state and federal civil rights statutes should be viewed “as a floor below which the City’s Human Rights law cannot fall, rather than a ceiling above which the local law cannot rise”), yet once again, he makes a decision that narrows the statute’s broad ability to combat all forms of discrimination. I also just looked up the profile of the attorney (http://www.jonesday.com/cdelorme/) and am quite shocked — and disgusted — that it was a person of color who argued on behalf of this company.
Source: http://www.law360.com/articles/478526/unpaid-interns-can-t-claim-harassment-under-nyc-law.
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 