Work ethics

Part 2

by Monica McKenna

Before that letter arrived in December, Clarke and Parkin had been waiting for the results of formal and informal complaints they had filed with Prudential, citing an increasingly hostile work environment.

As a sales agent, Parkin had to pay for her sales leads. She found many good leads about possible sales to young families going to other agents. She says she was handed leads, but they concerned elderly men, hardly the target audience for lifelong insurance coverage.

"The company would need to know about this because I was sure that if they knew what was going on, they would take appropriate action," remarks the still optimistic Parkin.

Parkin had specifically mentioned in her complaint to Prudential a threat, she says, she received from a co-worker who said he'd "beat the living crap" out of her one day last May. That was the same day her grandmother had died. Not at all a good day for Parkin to fight back.

"I didn't pursue it for a couple of weeks, but then I called the Ethics Line at Prudential and made an anonymous complaint," Parkin says. "I didn't give my name, but I did give the office. And I ran the situation by them. It wasn't until August that I filed a formal complaint" with Prudential's in-house investigators.

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To see a copy of the letter:

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After everyone in the office was formally interviewed, not another word was heard. The wait continues.

Clarke too had her worries. Although fellow workers had known for years she was a gay woman, she says, "The rumor around the office was that I was being targeted for the downsizing because of my lifestyle."

For whatever reason, the ax fell.

Later in December, Clarke, who had won office-performance awards and been nominated by the staff for those awards, was told that she was no longer deemed capable of performing the clerical and underwriting job she had held for 10 years. The company told the staff that impartial, outside experts were consulted in the downsizing. Prudential informed Clarke the next day when she applied for her old job that she was not qualified.

Clarke's layoff and the threats to Parkin galvanized the two to act.

They filed complaints against Prudential with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in February and retained Wendy Murphy. A savvy attorney with the Boston firm of Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten, Murphy considers her specialty is proving through court action that gender-based bias and violence exist this late in the 20th century.

In sworn complaints to the MCAD, they cite the hostility both women had encountered and blame Clarke's layoff on her "lifestyle." (Even before the layoff it was speculated that Clarke's homosexuality was the reason behind her job loss.) In that same sworn complaint, they allege that the office's general manager, Bob DesRosiers, was the co-worker responsible for the threat against Parkin.

Prudential has filed its response to the MCAD complaint, denying all of the allegations of harassment and discrimination. Company officials also rely heavily on previously published policy statements to back up the claim that bias is verboten in Prudential offices. The closest that Prudential gets to Clarke's allegations is in one paragraph of its response to the MCAD complaint.

"However, it did come to our attention that one member of management lacked interpersonal skills and was generally insensitive. In a nutshell, this individual had misused his position and created an untenable working environment for the majority of the staff, regardless of their sexual orientation. Respondent [Prudential] would have taken decisive, corrective action had not another matter removed the individual from the agency," according to the statement.

Among those waiting for the state to determine if there was harassment in the Auburn office and for Prudential to wind up its own internal investigation is Mary Bonauto. She wants the person responsible for the letter found and fast. As a lawyer with GLAD, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders based in Boston, she can't imagine what's taking the investigation so long. It's obvious to her that such a letter is a great example of harassment, the most common form of discrimination these days, she says.

Bonauto urged Prudential to intensify its investigation, especially if the letter's author is still employed by the company.

Clarke and Parkin are fortunate to live in Massachusetts, one of the few states where sexual orientation is not grounds for dismissal. As the governors of Maine and New Hampshire sign bills there, probably this month or next, all of New England will have protection for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, says Kim Mills of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC.

The campaign is currently working on national legislation to prohibit discrimination because of sexual orientation since several plaintiffs had sought unsuccessfully to use Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to claim harassment on the job that was permitted or ignored by supervisors. In research for the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), campaign workers have documented harassment that rose to the level of violence. Mills points out two cases one in Detroit where a postal worker was beaten unconscious and another case where a Chrysler worker in Twinsburg, Ohio was the target of homophobic graffiti. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found harassment in both cases but no laws to prohibit it just because the plaintiff in both cases was gay.

Another seeking answers is the chief of the Civil Rights Division in the Attorney General's office in Boston. Richard Cole wants to find the person responsible for the "offensive and obnoxious" letter, as he calls it. He has seen similar letters before and says that criminal intent can often be determined based on a letter's language.

One Prudential worker who wants to see the investigation over is Bob DesRosiers, the former office manager who had hired Parkin three years before and who oversaw her sales leads. DesRosiers was transferred and demoted in November for an undisclosed reason that Prudential told Parkin had nothing to do with her earlier in-house complaints in August and September.

DesRosiers readily acknowledges being mentioned in the MCAD complaint. (His handwriting, investigators say, was analyzed for its similarity to the envelope in which the hate letter was sent. No conclusion has been released.)

"They're making a mountain out of a molehill," he insists.

"I have no knowledge of that letter," says DesRosiers. "I never felt that way."

In fact, he says, he was no longer in the Auburn office when the offending letter was mailed. He says he had been transferred to another Prudential office near Fall River. He's not an office manager anymore but a sales representative, "just like Karan," he says, without offering any reason for leaving an office-manager's job for an on-the-road sales job.

Part 3