sexual harassment

A few of the recent pieces I recommend reading: Vox's Sean Illing interviews Nikole Hannah-Jones: “Schools are segregated because white people want them that way" Roxane Gay in the New York Times: Dear Men: It's You, Too Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post: ‘Let us do our job’: Anger erupts over EPA’s apparent muzzling of scientists Rita Schoeny at the Union of Concerned Scientists Blog: I Am a 30-Year Veteran Scientist from US EPA; I Can’t Afford to Be Discouraged For HuffPost Highline, Lydia Polgreen interviews Sharon McGowan, Walter Shaub, Mike Cox, and Ned Price…

Celebrity chef John Besh has joined Harvey Weinstein and Bill O’Reilly in news headlines about sexual harassment in the workplace. The New Orleans-based Besh has received numerous James Beard awards and has appeared on the Bravo TV network’s show Top Chef. His offenses were reported this week by Brett Anderson at The Times-Picayune. The reporter’s eight-month long investigation included interviews with 25 current and former employees of the Besh Restaurant Group. Brett Anderson’s story includes a copy of one of the EEOC complaints filed by a former employee. That employee says: "Vulgar and…

At the Center for Public Integrity, Jim Morris reports on working conditions at the nation’s oil refineries, writing that more than 500 refinery incidents have been reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since 1994, calling into question the adequacy of EPA and federal labor rules designed to protect workers as well as the public. Morris begins the story with John Moore, who in 2010 was working at a Tesoro Corporation oil refinery north of Seattle — he writes: Up the hill from Moore, in the Naphtha Hydrotreater unit, seven workers were restoring to service a bank of heat…

A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Eric Boodman at STAT: Night sweats, bloody cough — and a diagnosis that turned a doctor into an activist Laura Fink in The San Diego Union-Tribune: Debt of gratitude owed to Trump accusers Eliza Barclay at Vox: How to confront sexist “locker room talk,” according to science Jie Jenny Zou at Center for Public Integrity: State cutbacks, recalcitrance hinder Clean Air Act enforcement Joerg Drewke in Guttmacher Policy Review: “Fungibility”: The Argument at the Center of a 40-Year Campaign to Undermine Reproductive Health and Rights Lenny Bernstein and Scott…

At the Denver Post, John Ingold and Monte Whaley authored a year-long investigative series into the dangerous conditions facing Colorado’s oil and gas workers, the role of subcontracting in heightening worker safety risks, and the lack of employer accountability and oversight. The series, “Drilling through danger,” noted that 1,333 workers died in the nation’s oil and gas fields between 2003 and 2014, with 2014 being the second-most lethal year for oil and gas workers in Colorado in a decade. According to the newspaper’s analysis, there was about one oil and gas worker death per every 12 rigs…

In “The Invisible Workforce: Death, discrimination and despair in N.J.'s temp industry,” NJ Advance Media reporter Kelly Heyboer investigated conditions facing temp workers in New Jersey, which now has one of the largest concentrations of temp workers in the nation. She reports that growing demand for temp workers has led to the proliferation of “temp towns” — places with dozens of temp agencies and neighborhoods full of temp workers, many of whom report low pay, wage theft, racial and sexual discrimination, and unsafe workplaces. Heyboer writes: The temp agencies in New Brunswick are easy to…

At Mary Review, Mary Pilon writes about the experiences of women in the trucking industry, highlighting stories of sexual harassment and threats of violence that often get brushed to the wayside by industry employers and supervisors. The article notes that many women who seek out trucking jobs are in their 40s and 50s, are re-entering the workforce after a period away, and are attracted to a career that doesn’t require a higher education but can potentially yield a six-figure salary. Pilon begins the story with Cathy Sellars, who sought out a trucking job at age 55 after her divorce: Cathy…

In the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers report that sexual trauma is indeed a risk factor for suicide among military veterans and are calling on veteran health providers to continue including such trauma in suicide prevention strategies. Published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study is the first large-scale, population-based investigation into whether military sexual trauma is a risk factor in suicide-related mortality. To conduct the study, researchers with the Veterans Affairs system analyzed data on millions of veterans who received outpatient…

Hardly a day goes by lately without another story on companies like Uber and their model of classifying workers as independent contractors while treating them more like traditional employees and sidestepping traditional employer responsibilities. It’s a model that has serious implications for workers’ rights and wages. However, there’s another form of employment that may be even more damaging to hard-fought labor standards: subcontracting. In March, the University of California-Berkely Labor Center released “Race to the Bottom: How Low-Road Subcontracting Affects Working Conditions in…

Nearly eleven years ago, back in April 2005, I opened my work e-mail (I was working at a different university back then) and saw an e-mail from someone whose name I had seen before, one Mr. William P. O'Neill. Opening the e-mail, I was shocked to find an e-mail to Orac; worse, the e-mail was cc'ed to my cancer center director, my division chief, and my chairman. In it, O'Neill outed me as Orac and was threatening to sue me over a post I did. Naturally, it was interspersed with accusations of my being a "pharma shill" and having lied about him. Now here's the odd thing. This is the post that…

At Reveal, reporter Will Evans investigates discrimination within temporary staffing agencies, finding a pattern of racial, sexist and otherwise discriminatory hiring practices. He begins his story with Alabama-based Automation Personnel Services Inc., writing: When its clients wanted to hire temp workers based on race, sex or age, Automation was happy to oblige, according to dozens of former employees. Often, the practice was blatant. A manager at a Georgia manufacturing plant asked Christie Ragland not to send him “any black thugs,” she said. Ragland, a former Automation office manager…

I've written about conflicts of interest (COIs) a lot over the years. COIs are important in medicine and science because, as much as physicians and scientists like to think that they are immune to such things, we are as human as anyone else. We are just as prone to unconsciously (or consciously) being influenced by self-interest related to our COIs. Most of the time, for purposes of science, COIs are considered to be mostly financial in nature: employment or payments from a drug company, a financial interest in a treatment being studied, and the like. Andrew Wakefield is a classic example in…

Scads of stuff I don't have time to blog adequately... Johns Hopkins Provost Kristina Johnson was nominated by President Obama to be under secretary of the Department of Energy in mid-March. From the email press release: She is a distinguished researcher, best known for pioneering work -- with widespread scientific and commercial application -- in the field of "smart pixel arrays." Last year, she was awarded the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award in engineering and previously given to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Westinghouse and Orville Wright. She is an…

Reader JC left a comment on a recent post about sexual harassment that led me to a Feminist Law Professor post on a sexual harassment lawsuit against Brigham & Women's Hospital. It is a post well worth reading, if you have ever wondered why more women don't sue over sexual harassment, or why women don't just speak up immediately and complain at the first sign of harassing behavior. Maybe you have been secretly suspecting that women who file sexual harassment charges or lawsuits just have some ax to grind and/or are trying to ruin some Nice Man's career because they are bitter pre-/post-…

It's certainly a tragedy when anyone takes their own life. I feel very sorry for the surviving family members and colleagues affected by the suicides of two U. of Iowa professors accused of sexual harassment who took their own lives last year. And yet. I have little patience with this Chronicle of Higher Education article about them. You can file it under the category of "but he was such a really wonderful person! There's just no way he could have done these things!" Or, alternatively, "Those TERRIBLE women RUINED the lives of these WONDERFUL men!" In the case of Arthur H. Miller…

According to the Chronicle Newsblog Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues. You can find the full report here and a press release from the university here. The comments section at the Chronicle post is full of the usual dismissive commentary that arises whenever the issue of gender inequities in salary is broached. I liked this response from Meshiko: It amazes me that despite the…

A warning: if you are a survivor of sexual assault you may just want to skip this post and the ensuing ugly comment thread it is sure to engender. A week or so ago the redoubtable Dr. Isis wrote an open letter to me. In part she wrote: The pragmatic part of me wants to agree with you that there is no place for open ogling in the workplace. The other part of me fears that there may be a hint of truth in Greg's argument that we are inherently sexual beings... I see no reason to fear the truth that we are inherently sexual beings. But the fact that we are sexual beings does not mean that…

So, to recap: A couple of women are having a conversation, and the topic turns to tit-ogling. "No one should be staring at my tits in the workplace," they all agree. "That makes me uncomfortable, creates a hostile work environment, and constitutes sexual harassment! How difficult is it to look at my eyes? Staring and ogling is a threatening display of power enacted in a sexual manner. This isn't the Mad Men era. Haven't men figured out how to behave in a professional situation by now?" A dude at the table next to them has been listening in and feels compelled to pipe up: "Ladeez…

A reader named Paul Murray left this comment on a older blog post of mine: The comments on tit-staring make me wish the women could occupy a man's body for a day. Ignoring tits in your visual field is as easy as it is for a woman to simply ignore a cute baby in the vicinity. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. What to be more annoyed at? The suggestion that women are somehow programmed - biologically, of course, I am sure - with some sort of infant-adoration module? Or Mr. Murray's casual insult to his fellow men, that they are simply incapable of behaving decently? That's quite some…

You are a university president. You naturally wish to avoid scandal and negative publicity during your administration. The time to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment is: A: When you take office, or shortly thereafter. B: After one of your professors is caught emailing female students a quid pro quo: A's if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them. If you are University of Iowa president Sally Mason, you will, of course, pick option B. If this is only the first time the esteemed Professor Miller has engaged…