90% of Firms Participating in Poll Say They’ve Gotten Complaints : Survey Finds Widespread Sexual Harassment

Sex harassment complaints by female employees have been reported over the past year at 90% of big corporations that responded to a survey released Tuesday by Working Woman magazine.

In addition, the survey found that more than a third of the 160 companies had been sued by victims, a quarter had been sued repeatedly, and each spent an average of $6.7 million a year in costs related to sexual harassment.

Among other findings, the survey said two-thirds of complaints are made against immediate supervisors and upper management, and that most cases of sexual harassment are found to be valid.

Working Woman called it the first scientific sampling of sexual harassment at major U.S. companies.

The survey said that the overwhelming number of incidents were reported by women complaining about unwanted attention from men and that women in predominantly male workplaces felt the most vulnerable.

‘Financial Time Bomb’

The magazine also said the survey found how a problem once regarded as a feminist issue had become a substantial business concern, partly because of the increasing numbers of women at all levels of the work force.

“This is no longer the stereotypical old boss chasing the pretty young secretary around the desk,” Anne Mollegen Smith, editor in chief, said at a news conference. “If companies don’t deal with it better, this is a financial time bomb for American business.”

The survey suggested that many companies are responding to the problem, at least partly because they fear the adverse publicity and litigation costs associated with harassment complaints. Two out of 10 offenders were eventually discharged and others were given verbal or written warnings, the survey found.

It said top corporate policy makers generally have accepted the established guidelines for what constitutes sexual harassment promulgated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1980.

The commission said sexual harassment is any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is connected to employment decisions or that establishes an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.

Freada Klein, president of Klein Associates Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based management consulting firm that analyzed the survey results for Working Woman, said the calculation of $6.7 million a year average cost to a company was based on absenteeism, low productivity and employee turnover.

In 1987, a record $3.2 million was paid by one company, K mart Corp., to settle a single case.

Personnel, human resources and equal opportunity officers who represent 3.3-million employees at 160 of the nation’s 1,000 biggest corporations responded to the magazine’s 49-question survey.

Working Woman is published monthly by the Working Woman-McCall’s group of New York. The survey appears in the December edition.