This gourd looks like a…: Claims of sexual harassment in the Bloomington mayor’s office.
They include the following:
• “At a staff meeting, an employee announced that his wife was expecting their second child. According to Ms. Bradford, the Mayor said something along the lines of, ‘and I thought he spent the last year solely dedicated to his job.’”
• “Employees in the Mayor’s office hid a stuffed toy in various places for co-workers to discover as a running joke. Ms. Bradford said the toy was placed in an office chair (not in her office) in a suggestive manner.”
• “Someone placed gourds that had been dropped off as a gift by a vendor from the City’s Farmers’ Market in the Deputy Mayor’s chair. Ms. Bradford was offended by the employees laughing at and calling attention to the shape of the gourds.”
• “At a staff meeting at which the Deputy Mayor had his dog, someone commented on the dog’s collar. The Deputy Mayor made a joke about the collar.”
“Statutory and case law do not support Ms. Bradford’s attempts to turn trivial incidents into a federal employment case. Her charge, unsupported by law or facts, does an injustice to employees with legitimate, fair employment law complaints.”
“The number of incidents Ms. Bradford has brought to the City’s attention is quite small and spread over many months. None of them involved improper touching. They were in the nature of pranks or joking comments and not in any reasonable person’s view ‘severe.’ None of them were targeted at Ms. Bradford. Courts have said that indirect harassment has less of an impact on the plaintiff than direct harassment, and that the conduct has to be even more severe and pervasive to be actionable.”
“According to the city’s response, Grundmann found that her allegations of such incidents did not constitute a “hostile environment,” but he met with Kruzan and his two chiefs of staff to let them know an employee had raised concerns.
“They made it absolutely clear that no offense was intended, and that they would see to it that any behavior that could even potentially be considered inappropriate or offensive was discontinued. None of them asked Mr. Grundmann who had made the allegations and he did not volunteer the information,” the statement reads.”
The city claims that these charges are really just the retaliatory actions of a disgruntled employee who was unhappy about her salary. (She made $43,000, with other salaries in the mayor’s office ranging from $48,500 to the mayor’s earnings of $79,745.
Based on the excerpts I posted (if you were unable to access the original articles), does it sound to you like
If so, do you think that
If you do not think
Based on the information we have, do you think you would feel uncomfortable in the work environment described above?
1 Comments:
Erin's, Jenny's, and Corey's instincts that a certain amount of "loose" joking is (must be?) tolerated in a workplace, especially when it is not directed at the claimant is basically borne out in the case law. Recall Harris v. Forklift Systems and the objective standard applied to whether alleged harassment is so severe or pervasive as to alter the terms and conditions of employment. Also, recall Justice Scalia's reminder in Oncale that Title VII is not intended or structured to be a "general civility code" for the workplace. In other words, employees are expected to put up with some types of crass, boorish, stupid, and immature behaviors from others. But, there is a point where the line is crossed. And that line drawing exercise is tough. It often leads employers to adopt zero tolerance policies and likely prompted Mayor Kruzan and his two chiefs of staff to commit to "discontinue" any behavior that could even "potentially be considered inappropriate or offensive." Notice that, while the City argues that Bradford's allegations are of the innocuous and indirect variety, the City is still quick to point out that it tried to put a stop to the innocuous and indirect behaviors. So, one wonders if, in fact, Title VII's premium on practive, preventive and corrective measures regarding harassment turns it into something close to a general civility code. Managing in the shadow of potential Title VII harassment liability creates the incentive to have a super-sanitized work culture.
At any rate, you see the City relying on the same sort of intuitive sense that Jenny and Corey cite when making the legal-ish defensive arguments that Erin quoted in her post.
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