Workers Protest Harassment Suit Against Mitsubishi
On the defensive against a federal sexual harassment lawsuit that threatens to mushroom into the largest on record, more than 1,500 assembly line workers for Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America Inc. took part Monday in a street protest that signaled the company’s first public relations salvo against the government.
Hundreds of Mitsubishi workers jammed into a cordoned-off downtown street 28 stories below the offices of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed the lawsuit against Mitsubishi a week ago.
A delegation of protest organizers met briefly with EEOC officials during the march, but neither side offered any hint of compromise.
“Mitsubishi and its employees are certainly free to express their opinions in any lawful manner,” EEOC Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas said. “However, the EEOC will not be intimidated from pursuing this litigation.”
“We wanted them to know that this lawsuit doesn’t represent us and we didn’t ask for it,” said Brian Falasz, 31, an assembly line worker who talked with EEOC officials. “We have faith in the company.”
While the two sides met, hundreds of marchers chanted, “Two, four, six, eight, we’re here to set the story straight.” After two hours in the street under a steady drizzle, they herded back to 59 rented buses that had brought them 120 miles from the plant in Normal, Ill., to Chicago earlier that morning.
In recent days, workers at Mitsubishi’s manufacturing plant, where hundreds of harassment incidents are alleged by the EEOC and by private lawsuits, have placed advertisements in local newspapers supporting the company. Male and female workers organized the march “of our own free will,” Falasz said.
“Sure, there’s some sexual harassment at Mitsubishi, just like there is in any factory in America,” said A’nna Rogers, a Mitsubishi technical coordinator. “But it’s no worse than anywhere else, not like the government says. And this company doesn’t tolerate it at all.”
Lawyers suing the firm over its treatment of women at the Normal plant said that last week Mitsubishi managers called a meeting in the plant’s cafeteria to orchestrate worker reaction against the government. Marchers said Monday that the company had shut down its two assembly lines for the day and offered workers who joined the march a full day’s pay and lunch. Company executives were not available to discuss how the protest was organized.
Warned that negative publicity over the lawsuits could lead to lower sales figures and the possibility of layoffs, workers were asked to circulate petitions to counter allegations in the suits and to write to local newspapers and their political leaders, said Patricia Benassi, one of several private lawyers suing the firm.
“The company is paying for the buses,” said Benassi, who represents 29 women involved in a lawsuit that spawned the government’s own investigation. She alleged that Mitsubishi executives installed telephone banks at the plant and told workers they would have a paid day off to lobby against the EEOC.
Benassi and other lawyers went to court late last week to fight a gag order sought by Mitsubishi executives from a federal judge. The judge declined the company’s request.
The EEOC lawsuit alleges that harassment at the plant has ranged from insults to, in several cases, coerced sexual acts with lower-level managers. Government investigators said as many as 500 women may have been harassed--a number suggested by EEOC interviews with more than 100 female workers at the plant.
Mitsubishi took over the plant in 1988. Since 1990, the earliest point covered by the lawsuits, the plant has had a fairly steady female work force of about 700, out of 4,000 total employees.
