The record Harris Trust and Savings Bank sex and race discrimination settlement is an indisputable boost to women in the work force-and a compelling reminder to employers of the considerable price of unfair hiring, promotion and pay practices.
Still, some experts warn that the resolution-in which Harris admits no wrongdoing but must pay $14 million in back wages and rewrite its affirmative action plan-is tempered by a new form of bias that is tougher to fight.
”Clearly, because of this case, we have the precedence and concrete example to build on and apply in other industries,” observed Marcia Greenberger, an attorney for the National Women`s Law Center in Washington, D.C.
”And I think it points the way to tools that are available to help women face the problems of the workplace,” said Greenberger, one of the attorneys for Women Employed, the Chicago-based advocacy group that initiated the action against the bank.
But Mary Becker, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, who teaches a course on sex discrimination, is not as optimistic.
”It may close a chapter on the overt stuff,” Becker said. But the battle remains to identify and fight an already complex phenomenon, which is evolving into subtler forms as women move into new and higher work arenas. The increasingly conservative climate in state and federal courts is an additional hurdle, she said.
”We`re just not going to be able to use the courts the way they were used in the `70s.”
But the Harris settlement-which will result in an estimated 5,000 women and minorites splitting $14 million-shows that confronting discrimination can have powerful results.
The Harris suit began in 1974 after Chicago`s Women Employed, then barely a year old, decided to act on numerous complaints about how women were treated by many of the city`s financial institutions. Nancy Kreiter, research director for the organization, maintains that Women Employed became involved only after Harris ignored requests to discuss the complaints.
Women accused Harris of widespread segregation in training. They charged that they were forced to languish in dead-end clerical jobs while men with equal education, skills and experience, were placed on the executive track. They also were paid less for the same or comparable jobs, they claimed.
Women Employed, a not-for-profit organization that works to improve enforcement of equal opportunity laws, brought a class action suit under a 1965 presidential order forbidding federal contractors from discriminatory practices. Issued by President Lyndon Johnson, it also requires effective affirmative action programs.
The U.S. Department of Labor is charged with enforcing the order by evaluating polices and practices, and not just individual incidences.
The government, Greenberger explained, ”looks at the entire employment policies and practices and takes a broad-based approach to get behind what really are the barriers, and discrimination can be remedied effectively.”
The strategy proved successful for employees in the Harris case after years of legal and bureaucratic battles, sustained by Women Employed staff members and by the free legal assistance of Greenberger, the National Women`s Law Center and Chicago attorney Peggy Hillman.
They continued to pressure the government to enforce the order despite setbacks that included a 1983 decision by then Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan to nullify a 1981 Labor Department judgment for $12.2 million for the women.
Harris, now a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal and one of the nation`s largest banks, agreed to the settlement on Jan. 10. Its rewritten affirmative action policies-Harris insists they merely updated according to plan, and not prompted by the settlement-will be periodically reviewed by the government.
Kenneth West, chairman of Harris (who was not the bank`s top executive at the beginning of the action), said he is unclear about the institution`s initial response to complaints.
The bank has maintained that the settlement was purely a business decision and not an admission of guilt. Some former and current women employees also agree that the bank`s employment policies and practices never have been discriminatory.
”It was a long drawn-out process and we wanted to bring it to a close,” West explained. However, he acknowledged that the case ”. . . is regrettable because it did call into question the reputation of the bank and probably was an embarrassment to our employees.”
The enormity of the amount of the settlement has sent a powerful message to other employers, observers say.
”The prospect of a significant outlay of funds will make other employers sit up and take notice,” said Nancy Davis, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, a San Francisco group that works to ensure equal employment opportunities.
Charges of sex discrimination have mounted nationwide. According to Dick Battles, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Human Rights, charges of sex discrimination in the workplace ranked second only to race discrimination up until 1988. Last year, sex discrimination slipped behind complaints of age discrimination, which accounted for 3,636 complaints out of 4,953 overall charges filed.
The Chicago office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission logged 491 cases of alleged job discrimination because of gender, out of 2,110 cases filed in fiscal 1988.
Sexual harassment charges are included in gender discrimination complaints, and some say those complaints are on the rise. ”Women are becoming more vocal about not tolerating that kind of nonsense,” said Chicago attorney Elizabeth Hubbard, who handles many harassment cases.
The Harris case may signal the end of large class-action efforts aimed at curbing discrimination that denies opportunity, cases in which employment statisics can document alleged bias.
But experts forecast an increase in more sophisticated cases of discrimination, such as the one involving Ann Hopkins. Hopkins awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether a promotion mechanism steeped with sexism was responsible for her being denied partnership at a large accounting firm.
The first wave of discrimination suits were about access, explained Nancy Davis, an attorney and executive director of Equal Rights Advocates, based in San Francisco. ”Now the second wave has to do with how women are being treated in those jobs.”
There are women in non-traditional jobs where harassment continues to be a problem. Employment training programs where women are funneled into low-paying, ”female” jobs, also need reform.
”The fact remains that we have a tremendous number of women who are the working poor,” Davis said, ”who are running as fast as they can and are staying in place,” Davis said.
