William L. Hart, President, Employers Resource Association

Moderator: David C. Smith, President, Council for Ethics in Economics

Location: Council for Ethics in Economics conference room

David C. Smith, Moderator, opened the September Conversation by reminding the group that a pair of summer decisions from the nation's highest court has changed the landscape regarding employer liability for sexual harassment claims.

There are two decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in June of this year which have finally given us their answer to some perplexing problems of sexual harassment in the workplace. First of all, sexual harassment is a huge problem. It is not getting any better despite the number of law suits and all the hype and publicity. Almost all of the surveys consistently show that upwards of forty percent of women still report having experiences of one type or another that could be labeled as sexual harassment in the workplace. Now, whether they are legally actionable is a different question. There is also a very high rate of claims being filed which reflects the seriousness of that conduct being reported. Second, people forget it was only twelve years ago in 1986 that the U.S. Supreme Court actually recognized the concept of sexual harassment. It may seem as if this has been litigated for a hundred years. However, it's a very new theory of law relative to most legal doctrines that we deal with in the courts.

I also want people to understand the other side of the coin-the pervasiveness of people sticking their heads in the sand about sexual harassment. The best way to talk about this aspect is to talk about what lawyers do. Here you have a large portion of firms representing large institutions or individuals in these kinds of cases. You would think that they would be among the best at addressing such harassment problems within their firms. But in fact, as an example, a recent Ohio State Bar Association survey revealed that forty-seven percent of law firms don't have such harassment policies at all. In addition, thirty percent of women attorneys working for these firms report that their handling of such harassment cases is poor or inadequate. Now that's the problem. People talk about it, read about it, and worry about it. Not a lot of action is being taken in many instances-including the places you would expect to begin such activity. In light of this background we had some very important decisions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court resolving what has been the big question about sexual harassment and that is: When are employers liable and under what circumstances.

After the 1986 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court first recognized sexual harassment as conduct characteristic of a hostile work environment, the courts split on: 1) what constitutes a hostile environment in sexual harassment? 2) when would the employer be held liable? There was a line of cases which held that a hostile environment included overt acts which relate to someone's job, such as conditioning promotions and good evaluations on sexual favors or some other type of sexual conduct. The courts universally held that the employer was automatically liable when supervisors used their authority to affect a tangible job condition or benefit. However, there was less clarity about hostile environment liability when it came to another area: What happens when nothing is actually done in terms of a promotion or a discharge or an evaluation but sex favors are being sought, or there is harassment which is not sexual in nature but is targeted towards women and burdensome to the point that the work place environment becomes oppressive and many women don't even want to come into work anymore? They quit because constant remarks, constant double standards or a whole array of activity takes place.

When is an employer liable? There are a wide variety of decisions but generally the consensus was that when you could prove that the employer knew or should have known of the problem and failed to rectify it, there would be liability. At the same time that the courts of appeal and the federal courts were saying this, you had state courts going in a different direction. For example, in Ohio you had a case in which I was involved where the Ohio Supreme Court took a different position-whenever there was a hostile environment involving a supervisor, there was strict liability. So you had different standards. The U.S. Supreme Court has now made an effort to resolve this in two decisions: Burlington Industries, Inc., Petitioner v. Kimberly B. Ellerth, and Beth Ann Faragher, Petitioner v. City of Boca Raton. These were issued this summer. Here is some of the text that can be found in their decisions: An employer is subject to vicarious liability [meaning that the employer is responsible for the acts of their employees] to a victimized employee for an actionable hostile environment created by a supervisor with immediate (or successively higher) authority over the employee. So anybody who is a supervisor or above a supervisor and creates a hostile environment affecting an employee, the employer is going to be liable for it.

When no tangible employment action is taken-in other words no promotion is denied, no one is fired, there's no pay cut, there's no direct effect on the job situation-a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages subject to proof. Now what is the defense? I think people are being misinformed about this decision. The affirmative defense comprises two necessary elements: 1) the employer must provide reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexual harassing behavior. That's going to involve a reasonable good faith sexual harassment policy as well as the enforcement of the policy, the distribution of the policy, and on-going efforts to train and monitor compliance and 2) the second half of the affirmative defense is that the plaintiff and employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer, or to avoid harm otherwise. To summarize, if you have a supervisor who is creating a hostile environment, the employer is going to be held liable. However, liability or damages can be avoided if an employer has a policy and there is real action going on in monitoring it and enforcing it, and indeed the employee affected failed to use that policy.

Now let me point out two things about this. First, what if the employee does use the policy. Notice that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't say you are not liable if the employee does use the policy and you do something about it. My message to you as employers is this: From my perspective of predominately representing employees, my view of the U.S. Supreme court opinion is that there will be liability to the employer. The issue will be how much. So if you have an harasser in your employ and this person harasses someone in your company and the employee has filed a complaint and followed the procedures, you are not relieved of liability simply because you have a policy and the person used it. That is not a defense in the Court opinion.

Even when an harassed employee does not use the policy, you may still be liable if the policy is unreasonable. This means you have to structure a policy that will not force the person to go to the harasser. You don't make an employee go to his or her immediate supervisor if the complaint is about the supervisor. If you have a policy that is constructed so it creates barriers or puts unnecessary burdens on the complaining parties, then that may not be reasonable. The manner in which the investigation is conducted must also be reasonable. My second point: If there is a pattern of people using the policy and it ends up that they are fired or discharged, removed or suffer other adverse consequences, I think you are going to find plaintiff attorneys still willing to take these cases because it would be reasonable for a person not to go through the complaint procedure given a history of the company retaliating against those who file complaints.

What is significant about the opinion is: Just because: 1) you have a policy and someone uses it and 2) you try to remedy the problem, doesn't necessarily get you off the hook for what has already happened. The other thing I always wish to emphasize: There is a common misunderstanding that sexual harassment always has to be sexual. That is not the case. There has been a recent decision by Judge Graham that emphasizes that harassment doesn't have to be of sexual nature to be sexual harassment. In a number of cases there have been male supervisors who engage in the most outrageous conduct when they are talking to women subordinates-yelling, screaming, cursing-just obnoxious, insulting behavior. It is not sexual, no comments about sex or dirty jokes-they just treat the women like dirt. When they are talking to men subordinates, they are very respectful. Now that is sexual harassment.

The next point I would like to make involves the difference between sexual harassment in the workplace and legally actionable sexual harrassment in the workplace. Every dirty joke is not sexual harassment. Every untoward comment does not turn into a lawsuit. The courts are becoming very clear now-they are looking for patterns. Obviously in some situations a comment can be so outrageous that it might be grounds for harassment. But it has to be exceptionally horrendous. There is a hot debate in the courts that a single comment can ever be legally actionable. This is extremely rare. The common situation has to have a pattern. What I say to employers is: There may only be a single comment now but there may be a next one later, so you can't take any comfort that the situation you are dealing with only involves a single comment. If it is repeated and often enough, now you do have something that is legally actionable.

In summary, this would be my highlight of what happened this summer: It is that the U.S. Supreme Court has now said without question there is what is known as vicarious liability for sexual harassment. They have done away basically with the distinctions between what used to be called quid pro quo harassment, that is, harassment where you get a pay cut, or you don't get a promotion, or you are fired. Now they lump all harassment together and they call it sexual harassment in a hostile work environment. The only difference they say: If there is a tangible job effect, there is an automatic liability. If it does not involve a tangible job benefit, then there is an affirmative defense which consists of two parts-one is that you have a policy and you enforce it and second is that the target of the harassment unreasonably failed to use it.

We are not as consistent with the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court has been going for a few years now. Hence the new rulings may not be a happy solution for everyone but at least the court has given some clear guidelines whereby employers are going to be held responsible-like it or not-for a hostile work environment with very few exceptions.

One additional comment: In terms of sexual harassment, remember there is a great and close relationship between power and authority in harassment. Harassment is a fundamental problem between men and women in terms of attitude but a lot of sexual harassment is really just a case of abuse of power. A middle level manager can look very powerful to those in the ranks below. You know the old saying: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Look at the President-look at a lot of others at high levels.

REMARKS BY WILLIAM L. HART

We all need to understand that there is no such thing as two sides to the issue of sexual harassment. There is no side for the employee and no side for the employer. This is an issue that is front and center in America today. Sexual harassment is illegal and must bestopped in the workplace. Employees have certain responsibilities but employers have responsibilities as well. In my business, we work every day with employers to try to help them manage their human resource functions to the best of their ability. We spend a lot of time training employees, managers about the interest, the information and the legal aspects that lawyers handle. We emphasize the common sense business of running a business and not allowing sexual harassment to be in the work place.

Every day we hear employers say that sexual harassment doesn't exist in my company-I'm here to tell you it does exist. It may be hidden but it is there and now the U.S. Supreme Court has almost said employers are guilty until proven innocent. With the recent decisions that Fred Gittes just talked about, employers can now be responsible and liable for sexual harassment that they did not even know occurred. Let me also say that the "good old boy networks" are over. People don't like that. I have employers who say every day: "Gee, I wish we could go back to the way it used to be-it was so nice". You can't do that. Those days are gone.

Sexual harassment has been around for hundreds of years but only twelve years ago in 1986 it came front and center. As employers we have some very strong obligations and responsibilities under the law. Some of you may not know that you even have a responsibility as an employer for sexual harassment that could occur by someone who is not even employed by you. Last year about this time there was a case in Kentucky where a young lady was a receptionist at a company and had been there for eight or nine years. She quit her job and shortly thereafter filed a complaint of sexual harassment against the company. She contended that she had been subjected to sexually derogatory comments by salesmen calling into the firm, and by job applicants who came in to fill out applications. The employer tried to say: That's not my problem. As it turned out in the details, she had not notified anybody and the case just went out of sight.

You have to remember: If it happens in your workplace-I don't care where it comes from or who did it-you have the responsibility for it. You have the responsibility to find it, to prevent it, and to fix it. It doesn't take too long to look at some of the cases that have been settled in the last five to ten years for a quarter of a million dollars-even larger ones. Look at Mitsubishi. How much did that case end up-something like seventy-four million dollars? Prudent employers should take at least the following steps to prevent harassment in the workplace and minimize the potential for liability.

• Adopt and distribute a policy prohibiting illegal harassment in the workplace. An essential ingredient in preventing harassment as well as defending against harassment claims is having an effective anti-harassment policy. The policy should clearly prohibit harassment based on sex, race, religion, national origin, age and disability and list specific examples of inappropriate conduct. An effective policy tells employees what to do if they experience harassment, provides alternative avenues to report harassment, and stresses that retaliation will not be tolerated. If any governmental agency ever investigates a claim of harassment, the very first thing they will want to see is your written policy.
• Document distribution of your policy to all employees.
• Provide a process by which your employees may effectively make a complaint, including a process by which the person complaining may bypass the alleged harasser and report the offending conduct.
• Investigate all complaints and take prompt, remedial actionto stop the harassment and prevent retaliation. Follow-up later to ensure problems have been corrected.
• Provide periodic anti-harassment training for supervisors, managers and employees. Ensure that all employees understand the consequences if they engage in harassment or fail to take proper action if they know about misconduct.
• Regularly monitor the conduct of all managers, supervisors, and other agents of the company.

Here are some suggestions for: 1) an anti-harassment policy and 2) conducting investigations.

• Harassment has no place at work. It is against company policy and a violation of the law. It must be avoided and will not be tolerated by this company. Any harassment whether based on sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age or disability is prohibited.
• Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other offensive conduct that is either sexual in nature or directed at someone because of his or her gender. Sexual harassment undermines the employment relationship by creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.
• Harassment, whether sexual or based on characteristics listed above, may take many forms. By way of example, harassment may include:
  
  • VERBAL CONDUCT-such as epithets, derogatory jokes or comments, name calling, innuendos, demeaning slurs, or unwanted sexual advances.
  • VISUAL CONDUCT-such as leering, derogatory and/or sexually oriented posters, photography, cartoons, drawings, graffiti, electronic mail, or gestures.
  • PHYSICAL CONDUCT-such as assault, offensive touching, blocking of normal movement, or interfering with work.
  • THREATS OR DEMANDS-to submit to sexual requests as a condition of continued employment benefits.
  
  

• The company will not tolerate any such conduct. Personnel who violate this Policy may be disciplined or terminated.
• Any employee who experiences or observes conduct believed to constitute harassment should tell the harasser that the behavior is offensive and that you want it to stop. If you are unable to confront the harasser or are unsuccessful in convincing him or her to stop, immediately report the incident to any member of the executive staff so the incident may be fairly investigated and any prompt remedial action needed may be taken.
• We encourage employees to report incidents directly to their immediate supervisor, but any employee who is concerned or apprehensive may instead report any incident to the Human Resource Director or the President.
• There will be no retaliation against any employee who reports a complaint or who provides a witness statement during the investigation. Reports of alleged harassment will be treated as discreetly and confidentially as possible. No employee will be retaliated against for lodging a good faith complaint with management under this Policy. Any employee who believes he or she is being subjected to retaliation should promptly report this to one of the individuals listed above.

To ensure that sexual harassment investigation withstands judicial scrutiny, an employer should do the following:

• Designate at least two people, one of each sex, to whom complaints should be brought.
• Instruct investigators to ask the complainant if he or she is comfortable with the investigator and believes that the investigator can conduct an impartial investigation.
• Get all the details of the complaint from the complainant, including any prior history between the complainant and the accused harasser, and the names of any witnesses.
• Tell the complainant that the information will be kept confidential, but not secret, that it will be disclosed to the accused harasser, and that all the information could ultimately come out in court.
• Make an immediate written record of the allegations, ask the complainant to review it, make any changes, and then have them sign it to indicate that it is an accurate account.
• Draw up a list of questions to be asked of each person, as well as a list of the people to be interviewed, and determine the order of the interviews.
• Give the accused harasser detailed information about the complaint so that he or she will have a full and fair opportunity to present his or her side of the story.
• After each interview, make a written record, ask the person to review it and make any changes, and have them sign it indicating that it is an accurate account of the interview.
• Instruct investigators to make a credibility assessment of each witness at the time of the interview.
• Draw a conclusion of what likely happened; and,
• Take disciplinary action, if warranted.

To summarize, we as employers have a responsibility to treat employees fairly and properly and to the letter of the law. We have a responsibility and an obligation to stop sexual harassment-not say it will just go away. Even if we forget about the legal liabilities that we could face with law suits and discrimination charges and look at what's the right thing to do for these difficulties, we have an obligation: 1) to educate employees in these matters 2) to provide an equal employment opportunity 3) to provide an environment that is safe, and 4) to remove barriers so an employee can succeed. Sexual harassment is one of the barriers and we have an obligation to do something about it.

THE DISCUSSION<BR>

What about the supervisor who is harassing an employee-does this person ever get sued? What is the personal liability of the harasser?

Response from Gittes: I just argued in the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday a case that opened the question whether or not the individual supervisor can be sued. I represented the company's individual employee at least in terms of my employment work. I was arguing that individual supervisors should be responsible and must be held accountable. How can you ask employers to answer in damages for acts of supervisors when they don't even know necessarily that the supervisors did anything and let the person who did it not answer for it? I can tell you I have represented many women, many minorities who wouldn't let me file a lawsuit without trying to sue the individual because this is the person who did it. It wasn't a lot of money they wanted. Many cases could have been settled for an apology. In my twenty-five years of practice I have had a number of cases where if the company and supervisor would say, I'm sorry, officially, openly and acknowledge they did it, the case would have been settled for peanuts. They wouldn't so the case was filed and resulted in large verdicts or settlements. Money is important in our society but you would be surprised-in many cases other things are more important to many. That is why earlyviewing of these problems can solve them.

So what is the situation for an individual? Under federal law the most commonly used civil rights law called Title Seven which was adopted in 1964 is used and that is the one we get charges filed with the Commission under the federal law. Almost every court has said there is no liability by the employee individual-only the employer. So under Title Seven the harasser is immune. Now under Ohio State law, there's a split in the courts. Some say you can sue the individual and some say you can't. Of course yesterday we asked that they can sue because we believe you can never get enforcement unless you hold this person to accountability. Accountability is a courtroom way of changing people's behavior. It may not be the only way to change people's behavior and it may not succeed in every case but it can be a factor for many.

You should also be aware that there is a special set of laws that were adopted right after the Civil War called the Post Civil War Reconstruction Civil Rights Act which are only concerned with race and ethnic cases. Under this law you can sue individuals as well as the company. So federal law for many years in race and ethnic cases has allowed individuals to be sued, but under Title Seven, all other kinds of discrimination such as sexual harassment you can't sue the individual supervisor.

Are co-workers liable for harassment?

Response from Hart: Yes, co-worker harassment is covered by the law. A co-worker can be sued on a number of grounds such as physical touching, assault and battery, making certain kinds of comments, slander and libel and invading privacy, In addition employers can be liable for co-worker harassment-not just supervisor harassment. The difference is that you have to prove you are the target of the harassment if you are the employee being harassed. You also have to prove the company knew about it and tolerated it. If the company has a good policy in place and is really working with that policy, the company should be fairly free of liability in co-worker cases. A company must take its policy seriously or it will be liable for co-worker harassment.

What if this harassment between two employees is occuring outside the workplace-is the EEO officer still obligated to look into something?

Response from Hart: I would be very concerned and would look into it.

Back in the days of the "old buddy" network, many corporations had policies that said: You will not have consensual or nonconsensual sexual relationships with other employees. The company hired investigators and forced people to think about these actions. How does that stand with today's legal opinion in regard to the rights of individuals?

Response from Gittes: The notion that we now have situations of the accused having no rights and the trend moving towards civil rights gone wild can be documented otherwise. There have been a number of verdicts recently reported to me that are examples of this. A woman complained about a supervisor talking about an episode on the TV show, "Seinfeld", which touched on sexual issues. The woman made a report about it and the supervisor got fired. Well the jury returned a multi-million dollar verdict not only against the company but against the woman who made the complaint because it was an absurd complaint and it was more absurd that the company acted on it. Plaintiff's lawyers are not just representing those who make civil rights complaints but they are concerned about balance. You can overdo anything. The accused do have rights. And they do need to be protected in terms of investigations. There are more court cases now for those who have been terminated or disciplined for alleged harassment who have successfully sued-not because (in some cases) the complaint was false but (in some cases) they never should have been disciplined since the company did a "sham" investigation. Sham investigations go both ways. A sham can be in terms of assuming that everything is true, or a sham in terms of the "good old boy" protecting a supervisor who makes a lot of money and is very productive and not taking complaints seriously.

What about the problem of customers who harass an employee with their demands?

Response from Gittes: What commonly occurs as customer liability is called customer preference cases. A customer walks in and says: I only want to work with lawyers who are Jewish, or I only want a male attorney. If you cater to those preferences, you are liable. If you have an establishment where you have clientele coming in who are abusing personnel, such as a restaurant where patrons are clearly abusing the waitresses, and you know about it and don't do anything about it, you are liable. You can control who your customers are. You have the right to say: I do not want to do business with you. That's the difference between what happened this summer in the U.S.Supreme Court decision about supervisors and these other kinds of liability. Generally it has to be proven that you know about the behavior and you have failed to act. Whereas this summer, for supervisors you are being made strictly liable for offensive conduct whether you knew about it or not.

How can an employer be sure that an employee has received the company policy for sexual harassment?

Response from Hart: It is feasibly possible to have individual documentation by having each employee sign a receipt for the company policy. Some companies will have a training session for new employees and they have the employees sign that they attended the session and as part of the training received a copy of the company policy with an explanation of it. If you haven't set up a procedure for this, I strongly suggest that you do it.

How does an employer approach employees who don't want to make a complaint?

Response from Gittes: My experience has been that usually employees who are reluctant to talk do not have confidence in the system. You have to sell them on the fact that you will do everything in your power to protect them. The best way is to have someone else who has successfully used the process talk to the person saying I have reported a complaint and the system really works. Even though an employee doesn't want to make a formal complaint, you as the employer will be held responsible for that knowledge since you have it. I suggest to employers that they have their EEO officer investigate the problem even though the employee doesn't want you to do this. A year later, if I as an attorney get someone in my office from your business and she has had a very bad experience and heard from "Susan" who works there that she had a bad experience, told the EEO officer about it but told him not to do anything, that still counts as knowledge for your business. You have a duty as an employer to have a safe, working environment for women and minorities.

Response from Hart: Should you approach an employee who has had a bad experience and does not want to come forward? Absolutely. You have an obligation to look into this. What I suggest to employers is: If you are the EEO officer and believe that "Sally Jones" is being harassed, then I recommend that you contact her at home. Sometimes in the work environment she may feel intimidated going to the office thinking that someone else might come in while she is there. You can call her at home and say,"Gee, Sally, I've heard some things and I would just like to talk about it because we don't like such things in our work place. Now if nothing is happening, I'll let it go but please rest assured that if anything does happen, please let me know."

The approach of business to the problem of business ethics such as harassment is one hundred percent with the liability involved and covering for the business. My question is: In the past twelve years to what extent are there any policies where a percentage of the policy of training has the approach: We want people to not harass others because it is wrong when people are harmed-not because it is illegal.

Response from Gittes: In terms of the ethics question, people must initiate lawsuits in order to get others to do anything. As an example, you read about the big law firm in California involved in a seven million dollar lawsuit. They were having wet T-shirt contests and were having their para-legals and their associates participate in all kinds of contests. It just doesn't happen that a co-worker says to another co-worker: You have to stop that, or hear about a supervisor saying to another supervisor: You are out of line. People don't take responsibility and the result is no one does anything. In my opinion these things are not going to change. The same thing goes for racism. Lawsuits in many cases are about the only avenue that people have.

Response from Hart: An answer to this is that you have to look at the culture as the big picture of an organization. There are companies that are leaders in education of employees. They will do things that will attempt to develop understanding in employees about things that are right or wrong. However, a lot of top organizations and top people say it is not my place to put my ethical judgment in the minds of everybody else when you have a legal problem as we have here. I think that in some cases you can't always do just the right thing. You have to use the legal liability to protect the organization and its employees and at the same time you try to educate people in what's right and what's wrong. A lot of people are not going to accept that.

I can't tell you what your value system should be but if you have one, then maybe I can get you to change your behavior. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. Because of the visibility of this issue, I believe that there is almost a zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. You have little choice except to take the hardest approach that you can. You absolutely can't let harassment happen. You just have to get rid of it in your workplace if it appears.

Comment: There is a tremendous vacuum of confrontation in our organizations of all kinds-profit and nonprofit. We do not like to confront people, we do not like to push people's behavior. At first we will use negative condemnation-very seldom positive. Wedon't build an organization's culture, we let the cultures build us. And until we get out of that, you are always going to resort to the legal advocate. Until people start standing up and confronting problems and having that as an organizational "bag", those organizations don't want to hear these suggestions.

Comment: But isn't it laughable when a corporation talks about the legal standpoint when it has value statements hanging on the wall-as many do-that just gather dust? Since corporate values are not used, a cynicism develops among employees that corporate values don't mean anything at all.

Response: I think value statements are extremely important as a start but in terms of issues you have to make the values actionable. If you aren't willing to put them on the line to make them actionable, then you are not going to change the culture.

Comment: We should look to the schools where many have conflict resolution programs. The students are the first line that deal with conflicts of any sort. Then they have a hierarchy that goes up to the principal or even the superintendent if necessary. It begins with students solving problems arising between students. Sexual harassment is one of those problems. They will say: Stop doing this and don't do it anymore.

What are the causes and strategies for adjusting such behavior [sexual harassment] rather than what are the symptoms?

Response from Hart: I think sexual harassment involves sensitivity. There are a lot of white males our age and over who do not have the same respect for females that perhaps the newer generation has and maybe that's because of the older value system. Until the 1930s and 1940s many people never thought that women should even be in the workplace. What are the causes? One of the causes is the insensitivity of certain people in the way they were trained, the way they were brought up. In some cases there is ignorance on the part of some who don't view females as equals, do not view homosexuals as equals. It goes back to the fundamental precepts of what I believe in-what is the right thing to do? Can we cure the harassment problem? I don't know.

You keep referring to a safe place from harassment for women. What about men?

Response from Gittes: As the U.S. Supreme Court said this summer: Same sex harassment and harassment by women against men are also covered. A good friend of mine received a million dollar verdict for a man in California harassed by a woman supervisor. I keep referring to the harassment of women because about ninety plus percent are women who are being harassed. The oldest oppressed identifiable group in our history is women. Almost every society in history has oppressed women going back to aborigine cultures. Even in family structures, the relationship between a husband and wife can be subservient or equal. So sexual harassment is a fundamental problem in our perspectives. In business I don't think it is a matter of the age of the harasser in theworkplace because there are as many young supervisors as old doing these things.

What about doing business in other countries where they say: Don't send us women engineers?

Response from Gittes: There is a real question about the territoriality in Title Seven. You are here in a business and they are asking you to send only men over there. You can't do that. You are liable. If they come to the U.S. for personnel, you are subject to the preference costs.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Frederick M. Gittes is one of the founding partners of Spater, Gittes, Schulte & Kolman in Columbus, Ohio. He has written and taught extensively on civil rights, employment law and trial advocacy. He has been selected for inclusion in every edition of Best Lawyers in America, currently in two categories-labor and employment law and First Amendment law. Mr. Gittes received his B.S.(with honors) from Rollins College in 1968 and his J.D.(Cum Laude) from The Ohio State University College of Law in 1975.

William L. Hart is President of Employers Resource Association, a not-for-profit membership trade organization headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio with a branch office in Columbus, Ohio. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. His background includes nine years of corporate human resource experience as well as twenty-two years of association management.

Highlights is one among many benefits of membership in the Council for Ethics in Economics. The Council thanks Celianna Taylor for assembling and editing this and future editions of Highlights.

We acknowledge with gratitude the special support of Leadership Circle members Ashland Chemical Company and Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue.

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