Good thing our trucks are made at the Warren, MI truck plant....At
least mine was.
Mike Sype
--- The Man From Utopia <tmfu@home.com> wrote:
> 09:53 PM ET 07/19/99
>
> Woman Wins $21M From DaimlerChrysler
>
> Woman Wins $21M From DaimlerChrysler
> By JIM SUHR=
> Associated Press Writer=
> SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) _ A jury awarded $21
> million Monday to a
> woman who claims she was sexually harassed for
> years in her job at
> a Chrysler plant in Detroit.
> Linda Gilbert alleged in a 1994 lawsuit that
> the automaker did
> nothing to address her complaints that male
> co-workers placed
> Polaroid images of male body parts and obscene
> cartoons where she
> would see them, made sexually explicit comments and
> urinated on her
> chair.
> The company, now DaimlerChrysler, said an
> appeal was imminent,
> arguing that ``holding a company liable for the
> isolated acts of
> anonymous co-workers sets an impossible standard
> and a dangerous
> precedent.''
> ``Under these rules, every bad joke or
> overheard remark can
> become the basis for a multi-million-dollar
> lawsuit,'' Judith
> Pickering, DaimlerChrysler's assistant general
> counsel, said in the
> statement after the Wayne County jury announced its
> verdict in the
> six-week trial. ``Ironically, verdicts like this
> weaken public
> support for sexual harassment laws, undermining the
> very
> protections they were meant to provide.''
> The award includes $20 million for the
> embarrassment and other
> emotional fallout Ms. Gilbert said she suffered
> since 1992 at the
> Jefferson North Assembly Plant, where Jeep Grand
> Cherokees are
> made. The remaining $1 million is for lost future
> income and
> necessary medical and psychiatric care.
> Ms. Gilbert, 39, accused the automaker of
> failing to investigate
> and stop the harassment she said began when she
> first started
> working at the Jefferson North plant in 1992. As a
> millwright, Ms.
> Gilbert's job entails repairing machinery used in
> the plant.
> ``From that moment, she was harassed on a daily
> basis because of
> her sex,'' said Geoffrey Fieger, Ms. Gilbert's
> attorney. ``It has
> gone on unabated, continuously.''
> Ms. Gilbert, who plans to return to work at the
> plant Tuesday or
> Wednesday, said the harassment left her ``degraded,
> humiliated and
> embarrassed'' but never winnowed her resolve to
> keep working there.
> ``It made it so I dreaded going to work every
> day, but I wasn't
> going to quit,'' she said. ``I wasn't going to let
> them push me
> out.''
> Fieger said that each time his client
> complained to supervisors,
> ``the retaliation would get worse.''
> But in its statement Monday, DaimlerChrysler
> said it took
> ``prompt action'' to investigate Ms. Gilbert's
> allegations ``even
> though she refused to cooperate.''
> In all but one instance, DaimlerChrysler said,
> Ms. Gilbert
> refused to identify the suspected offender. In that
> one case, the
> worker was reprimanded in writing and put on notice
> another offense
> would cost him his job, the automaker said.
> In all other cases, DaimlerChrysler said, the
> company ``put
> employees on notice that this type of behavior
> would not be
> tolerated.'' The automaker also said it agreed to
> transfer Ms.
> Gilbert _ at her request _ to another work area in
> the plant on a
> different shift.
>
>
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