Hollywood money fights harassment
Time’s Up fund can be boon for low-paid women
Gina Pitre had come to dread working at Walmart. A manager, she said, used to touch her inappropriately and make suggestive comments.
Pitre, 56, who earned $11.50 an hour fulfilling online orders in D’Iberville, Miss., said she felt degraded and angry.
Pitre saw a television news segment this winter about how female Hollywood stars and producers had started Time’s Up, a group to help women combat harassment. A related initiative, the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, connected Pitre with a lawyer and is helping fund her lawsuit against Walmart and one of its managers.
Hollywood, it appears, is starting to make good on its promise to focus on women outside the limelight and broaden the #MeToo movement.
Filed last month, the lawsuit, one of the first to arise from the Time’s Up fund, is part of a multipronged approach. Beyond the various legal aspects, the group is working with labor
and social activists, as well as communications specialists and others, to publicize the struggles of working women facing harassment on the job.
Actress Susan Sarandon, along with Pitre, female Walmart workers and labor activists, signed a letter to the retailer’s chief executive, demanding changes in the company’s policies and procedures around harassment.
“I don’t care who you are,” said Pitre, who left her job at Walmart last month. “There is no cause for disrespect.”
Walmart said it had conducted a “comprehensive investigation” into Pitre’s complaints and “could not substantiate a violation of our Discrimination and Harassment Prevention Policy.”
“We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind and thoroughly investigate all sexual harassment allegations,” the company added.
Since it started in January, the Time’s Up fund — which is administered by the National Women’s Law Center in Washington — has raised about $22 million in donations to help pay for legal representation and other assistance for women facing harassment.
So far, about 2,700 workers have contacted the fund, saying they have been harassed. The largest number of complaints, about 9 percent, have come from the arts industry, followed by workers in the federal government, education and health care. Retail workers made roughly 5 percent of the complaints.
Volunteers at the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group focused on women’s rights, have been reviewing the online complaints and providing many workers with names of lawyers who might be willing to take on their case. The law center does not vet the facts of each case, but relies on the workers’ lawyers to make sure the claims are sound.
When deciding on funding, the staff uses a set of “priorities,” including whether the worker is in a low-wage job or in a male-dominated occupation.
“We hope to send a message to employers,” said Emily Martin, the law center’s general counsel. “Just because a woman doesn’t have a lot of money or connections doesn’t mean someone isn’t going to stand up for them.”
The assistance from Time’s Up is relatively modest — about $3,000 to help pay the initial lawyer fees. If the case goes to trial, the fund will provide up to $100,000 for fees.
In some cases, publicity is part of the strategy. The National Women’s Law Center will provide “communications support” — connecting women with public relations specialists — to help them call attention to their story.
Martin said publicity could help “broaden the impact” of the legal cases in combatting harassment. Toward that end, the law center connected Pitre with Our Walmart, a worker advocacy group. This month, Our Walmart sent the letter signed by Pitre and Sarandon to CEO Doug McMillon, calling on the retailer to revamp its harassment procedures.
A Walmart spokesman said in a statement, “We have strong policies and procedures in place to address allegations of sexual harassment, and we believe our current practices meet or exceed many of the requests in the letter.”
When Pitre started working at Walmart in June 2016, she liked the job, she said. But after a few months, a supervisor started to harass her, including instances when he grabbed her breasts and made “unwelcome sexual comments,” according to her lawsuit.
Last July, she reported the harassment to a company ethics department, her lawsuit says. Pitre said she was eventually told that the company’s investigation was closed, but was never told the outcome.
A Walmart spokesman said the company does not disclose the outcomes of its harassment investigations to anyone, including the employee filing the complaint. The spokesman said this policy is aimed at the “privacy and confidentiality of all concerned.”
In its letter, Our Walmart demands that the company start informing employees about the results of its harassment investigations.
Pitre had previous experience with harassment. In 2008, she filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing her former managers at the Boomtown Casino in Biloxi, Miss., of groping her and making sexually suggestive comments, according to her lawsuit.
The case resulted in a confidential settlement and “the termination and/or discipline of certain parties at Boomtown Casino,” a company spokesman said in an email.
Martin said she was not aware of Pitre’s earlier lawsuit when the Time’s Up fund approved funding for her Walmart case. But Martin said it would not have been a factor in the decision.
“It is not shocking that this job is not the first job where Gina has experienced some sort of harassment,” Martin said.
The Jackson, Miss., office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it had been “unable to conclude” that the “information obtained” in Pitre’s case showed that Walmart had broken the law. The agency added that its ruling did not mean Walmart was “in compliance with the statutes,” either.