I am deeply disappointed in the way you’ve covered and editorialized on the Ford Motor Co. sexual harassment situation.
I’ve been involved in this case since last summer and have worked closely with the plaintiffs who settled as well as the two now in federal court. I can’t believe that given Ford’s egregious behavior, one press initiative garners the best editorial they could have dreamed of. I would have thought that you would wait and see if real change happened–not just spin control.
The National Organization for Women wants real, meaningful change, and so far Ford has demonstrated no commitment that I have seen. I met with the plant managers, United Auto Worker representatives and people from Dearborn last October. We told them what we had heard from women. They did nothing. Only with the impending expose from “Dateline NBC” did they act.
Ford was ordered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission two years ago to clean up its act. The company settled its cases, gagged the women and went on–except the second round of complaints to the EEOC has named the very same men as the first. So just what did they do to address the problems? In fact, a woman from Dearborn was sent to interview almost 100 women and report back to headquarters. Nothing happened. For this you write, “That’s the kind of decisive action needed from top management. . . .”
The initiatives announced by Ford were pure fluff. They already had an 800 number for sexual harassment; they had already sent a team into the plants from Dearborn; they did not even fire the real harassers–only sacrificial lambs. In fact, the top management at both plants did not act decisively, as they have known about and condoned this for years.
The Ford public relations team must be popping champagne. No mea culpa, just spin. The reporting was so sympathetic to Ford I was stunned.
They did not deserve the lukewarm, almost complimentary editorial you wrote. They do not deserve to be lauded for their decisive action. They deserve to be excoriated, and “Dateline NBC” will do that when the story is told to millions of viewers. You will see just how much upper management knew about and condoned the sexual harassment that the women endured every day.
