thought this might relate to the discussion about colleges, CS programs,
and females; this is what happens when the CS majors graduate.

srl
----
Shane Renee Landrum
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Harassment Suits Hit the Dot-Coms

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By MELINDA LIGOS

he dot-com workplace is a magnet for young Americans, with its promise of 
adventure, riches and a casual work environment.

Now, though, the environment may be getting too casual. Managers at some 
Internet companies are rethinking their corporate cultures as a smattering 
of sexual harassment lawsuits begins to roll into their high-technology 
world. Some legal experts think these cases might be the beginning of a wave.

"The Internet start-up community is going to be a major target for sexual 
harassment litigation," said Gregory I. Rasin, a senior partner at the 
Manhattan office of Jackson Lewis Schnitzler & Krupman, an employment law 
firm that has several dot-com clients.

By nature, these companies are at legal risk because the entrepreneurs who 
start them are often eager to create the ultimate anticorporate 
environment, says Corey Sprague, director of human resources at the 
RiskMetrics Group, an Internet start-up on Wall Street. "I get a lot of 
calls from people who are setting up dot-com companies and want to create a 
no-holds-barred, wild culture, free of rules and policies," said Ms. 
Sprague, whose company is one of the few start-ups that hired 
human-resources personnel from the beginning. As a result, she says, most 
are not eager to create policies and training programs that address 
traditional human resources concerns.

Even managers who are sensitive to issues like sexual harassment are so 
focused on raising capital and expanding their businesses that they neglect 
to create a human resources department to address them, says John Iorillo, 
co-founder of the Ambrose Employer Group, a provider of human resources 
services in New York that has more than 120 dot-com clients. "For the first 
few years, most start-ups are just in survival mode," he said.

That was the case at Pseudo Programs, a Manhattan-based Internet TV network 
that was sued in January by a former employee who says the company had a 
hostile work environment for women. In her complaint, the employee, Kelly 
Alfieri, said male employees at Pseudo frequently referred to female 
employees as "bimbos" and forced them to look at sexually explicit material 
on the Internet.

Pseudo's male employees "were allowed to do whatever they wanted," said 
David Jaroslawicz, Ms. Alfieri's lawyer. "It was like they were living in 
the Wild West, and the sheriff was out of town."

Jeanne Meyer, senior vice president for marketing at Pseudo, said Ms. 
Alfieri's accusations were "completely without merit." The company 
acknowledges that it created a human resources department only after Ms. 
Alfieri quit Pseudo two years ago. "As with most start-ups, our senior 
management did everything in the beginning, from putting toilet paper in 
the bathrooms to payroll," Ms. Meyer said. But now, she said, its new 
department "continually reinforces the company's sexual-harassment policies."

Compounding the lack of formal policies and training at many start-ups is a 
culture of long hours and close quarters. "People are working 80 or 100 
hours per week, so the only social contact they're having is in the context 
of the workplace," said Daniel Weisberg, an employment-law specialist at 
Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, a Manhattan-based law firm. As a result, he 
says, inner-office dating is rampant, and relationships that go sour have 
the potential to turn into sexual harassment complaints.

In one highly publicized example, Juno Online Services, a Internet company 
based in Midtown Manhattan, was sued last fall by two former female 
employees who said they had been told they would lose their jobs if they 
broke off their relationships with senior executives they were dating. 
Juno's lawyer, Terri Ross, says the company denies the accusations in both 
lawsuits. One lawsuit has since been referred to arbitration by a New York 
state court, and Juno has applied to send the second complaint to arbitration.

Another common theme in cases he handles, Mr. Weisberg said, is that "the 
one who was spurned gets terminated or doesn't get the promotion they 
thought they should get and decides to sue."

Because Internet start-ups are often small, with many staff members working 
in the same space, other employees are often unwitting witnesses to office 
liaisons, according to Garry G. Mathiason, a partner at Littler Mendelson, 
a San Francisco employment-law firm that represents more than 1,000 
dot-coms throughout the country.

Mr. Mathiason offers the example of a company he represents where an 
employee recently complained that she had walked in on two co-workers 
having sex on the office floor. The woman was so offended, he says, that 
she immediately quit her job and is threatening to bring a claim against 
the company.

While such reports of sexual harassment seem fairly blatant, the majority 
of sexual harassment complaints at dot-coms are more subtle, according to 
Mr. Weisberg. "The most common problem we hear about are employees who are 
offended by all the sexually explicit e-mail jokes that bounce around these 
offices," he said.

Mr. Mathiason recently received a complaint from an employee who said she 
had received an e-mail, later traced to a co-worker, that read, "I see 
you're wearing black today. You're a very bad girl," and directed her to an 
X-rated Web site. At another dot-com, Mr. Mathiason said, female employees 
complained that their male colleagues were continuously logging onto a Web 
site featuring co-eds taking showers.

"These kinds of activities seem to predominate in the dot-com world," Mr. 
Mathiason said. "A lot of these guys haven't been out of school for very 
long, and they're still experimenting with this kind of juvenile stuff."

Not all managers turn a blind eye to such antics, of course. Mr. Weisberg 
said his office had fielded several calls from dot-coms looking to provide 
sexual harassment training to managers. His office recently assisted two 
larger Manhattan-based Internet companies, DoubleClick Inc. and About.com, 
in setting up anti-discrimination training programs. "We're definitely 
seeing more companies take a pro-active stance," Mr. Weisberg said.

Another start-up, Boutique Y3K, recently appointed a human-resources 
manager to oversee its 12 employees. "We intend to take issues of 
harassment and discrimination seriously," said Lisa Tisdale, the new manager.

Those that do not take such issues seriously are looking for trouble, Mr. 
Mathiason says. "Right now, you're not seeing as much litigation as you 
might expect" in the dot-com world, he said. That is partly because the 
economy is so robust that would-be plaintiffs are "getting six job offers 
on the way to their lawyers' offices," Mr. Mathiason said.

But the minute the economy slows, he warned, disgruntled employees will 
have fewer opportunities to move on and will be more likely to go after 
their deep-pocketed former employers. "It will be like an earthquake hit," 
he said.




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