http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=597558
At AirTran Airways, the message is simple: "Go. There's nothing stopping you."
But the slogan takes on an entirely new meaning in light of charges by five former employees that company officials failed to put the brakes on widespread sexual harassment and sexual and racial discrimination at its Milwaukee station. Consider just a few of the accusations:
A supervisor slipped on a white hood and told black workers that he was with the Ku Klux Klan.
The same supervisor kicked a female employee, after she refused his advances, so often and so hard with his steel-toed shoes that she suffered rectal bleeding.
At least two female employees were assaulted by a male colleague who grabbed them from behind and then simulated having sex with them.
Male workers weren't punished after they had sex with federal airport employees - one in the boss' office - while on the clock.
Porn was routinely left on office computers. Workers passed around pictures of nude women, including ones of female workers. The men in the office openly discussed their sexual exploits while hitting on the women and asking to take pictures of their breasts.
The female manager did little or nothing in response. And several of the complaining women were laid off or passed over for plum jobs.
Welcome to AirTran's office at Mitchell International Airport, according to the five federal lawsuits filed since March 2006. The cases could go to trial this fall.
The Florida carrier is attempting a hostile takeover of Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines, offering $9 in cash and 0.5842 share of AirTran stock for each share in Midwest. Executives with Midwest are urging shareholders, who meet in Virginia next month, to reject the latest proposal from AirTran.
The five federal lawsuits portray a small airport office - it has only 31 employees - that permitted shocking incidents of abuse, harassment and discrimination.
Quite a contrast to the wholesome image that Midwest Air tries to present with its friendly flight attendants and chocolate chip cookies.
Janet Heins, the lawyer handling four of the lawsuits, was generally tight-lipped about the complaints last week, except to say the sides have finished gathering evidence and conducting interviews with witnesses.
"I feel like we do have the information we need to go forward," the Mequon employment attorney said. "The complaints pretty much speak for themselves."
The state Equal Rights Division found probable cause in the cases of two former AirTran workers - Susan Henneman and Tami Ott - that AirTran had discriminated against the women, permitted sexual harassment to occur and retaliated against the two after they raised objections. Tricia Knight, the lawyer with the fifth lawsuit, said Friday that she and Heins took the cases to federal court because retirements and illnesses had slowed the state review.
AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson was clearly not prepared to discuss the suits last week.
Asked whether the five women fabricated the charges, misinterpreted the various incidents or were the victims of widespread abuse, Hutcheson said, "Um, let me ask - if I can put you on hold for a second - let me ask . . . "
Several minutes later, Hutcheson returned to say that he wouldn't talk about the specific accusations or even the general points made in the cases.
He did point out that since 2000, the company has been the subject of fewer than 20 complaints to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a year. The five civil suits, he added, represented the first time the 8,000-employee carrier has been taken to court over a harassment or discrimination claim in at least seven years.
"We're breaking new ground here," Hutcheson said.
Heins countered, "So what?"
All five suits paint a similar picture: Office workers and supervisors who went surfing for porn on computers at the ticket counter; male workers who bragged about specific sexual and sometimes violent acts; female workers who were laid off, treated unfairly or told they would be skipped over for plum assignments if they spoke out; and a manager who permitted all of this.
But several of the suits contain charges of graphic sexual harassment. All five women have left their jobs as customer service agents with AirTran. The Milwaukee office has one office manager, three supervisors and more than two dozen customer service agents.
Laurie Dalton of Greenfield claims that two male colleagues had a bet as to which of them would be the first to sleep with either her or her daughter, Victoria Jensen, who also worked there. After Dalton repeatedly rejected their overtures, the lawsuit says, one of the guys grabbed her by her ponytail in February 2003, "forcibly bent her over the airport counter, lifted up her jacket," simulated sex and then smacked her.
When she complained about the assault and all the explicit remarks, her manager replied, "James says this kind of thing to me all the time," the federal complaint says. AirTran has denied the allegation.
In her suit, Henneman reports a similar assault by the same male co-worker. Her complaint also went nowhere:
"Plaintiff's only communication with (AirTran) in response to her report. . . was a letter from Amy Morris at the corporate office telling her that no investigation would be conducted because the complaint had 'leaked' " to the male worker. Again, AirTran disputes this charge.
Jensen said in her federal complaint that she saw two male co-workers take a couple of female airport staffers to the bathroom and the manager's office for sex while on duty. The next day, Jensen complained to the manager.
"(Her) only actions," the complaint says, "were to change the locks on her office door and to post a sign on her office door saying that only supervisors and managers were allowed in the office."
Probably the strongest and most disturbing allegations come from Latrina Cain, a black Milwaukee resident who worked for AirTran for less than a year beginning in July 2003.
Her immediate supervisor, the suit says, made frequent remarks about Cain's breasts, even going so far as to ask whether he could take pictures of them. Several times, he grabbed her breasts and made sexually suggestive remarks, it says.
But when she rebuffed his numerous advances, the complaint says, he repeatedly "kicked her hard in her buttocks with his steel toed boots." After one such episode, Cain said, she sought medical treatment because she was bleeding from the rectum.
In October 2003, the supervisor began saying and doing racist things; among several incidents, Cain cited a time when she was with another black worker and at least one white staffer. The supervisor "placed something white on his head," her complaint says. "He then told Plaintiff and the other employees that he was a member of the KKK.
"No one. . . thought his conduct was funny."
Hutcheson, the AirTran spokesman, said the supervisor and manager voluntarily resigned from the company. He is not sure where the two are living now.
No Quarter did not name the supervisors and the men accused because neither they nor their attorneys could be reached to get their side of the story.
As for the upcoming vote on AirTran's takeover offer, Hutcheson said he hopes Midwest shareholders don't take the news about the harassment and discrimination claims into consideration. He called the lawsuits "individual personnel issues."
"It's unfortunate we had this issue," Hutcheson said. "But we'll let the judicial process work."
back from disney. But that was beacause of weather not AT fault.
