Harassment

As good as this job was it was also the job at which I experienced my first overt act of sexual harassment. I have been asked out a few times and as I say “Ask me once it’s a compliment; ask me twice it harassment.” I also believe it’s not harassment if you like it. When men and women work together, there can be light hearted chatter. I get that. In this instance, I barely knew the man and definitely didn’t like it. It was mid-afternoon as I was walking out of the building to go get material out of the job trailer. In a narrow hallway, two electricians were coming in, the general foreman and another who was the husband of a painter with whom I had become friendly. The GF, Dave Carr, who would later become BA for the electricians, said, “You’re looking wonderful today” and then grab both breasts and gave a double honk. I was so surprised and aghast; I just stepped aside and brushed past them. I was shaking and confused and really didn’t know what to do. Somehow I worked the rest of the afternoon and when I got into the truck with my husband, I burst into tears. Wisely he told me I had to deal with it myself, but that he would back me up if needed. After a sleepless night, I went to work with a plan. First I spoke to both my steward and my foreman explained what happened and told them how I was going to handle it. Then I found the dickhead and said, “You are the GF for the electricians. You never need to speak to me. If you do, I will file harassment charges and you will never work at Cornell University again. This starts now.” Then I walked away. He had the other guy try to explain that they had had a long liquid lunch and really Dave’s a nice guy. I stood my ground. He never spoke to me again and I never spoke to him. In retrospect, maybe I could have been harsher, but at the time I handled it as best I could. Mostly the harassment I have dealt with has been subtle; awkward silences, refusals to work with me, sexist jokes, porn left at my seat at the break table, BS I could ignore. On one job I was discussing pipe layout with my foreman when over his shoulder was a full beaver shot from Penthouse. Jack H was a friend. I told him I really didn’t need to be looking at porn on a jobsite. He said it was the GF's nothing he could do about it. So I told the steward, Mark S, also a friend who said the same thing. The BA, Steve W, said, “Come on Peg, you’ve been in long enough to learn to deal with this stuff.” So I was stymied. Here are 3 “friends” unwilling to support me. Plus their solution was to not allow us into the office trailer, which made the pipefitter I was working with angry as she needed to use the phone there (before cell phones). So I dropped the issue, until a few months later, she called me to say she was going to file charges against the company for harassment. I convinced her to let me talk to the GF before she did that. When I told Billy F that the picture was offensive and made me feel uncomfortable, he apologized profusely, said he had no idea as no one had ever said anything to him. He took it down immediately. Sometimes you have to skip the middleman, I guess