Witnesses of harassment face their own risks
Lost in conversation about media scandals are stories of people in ordinary workplaces who speak up
Life was going well for Christopher Partee when the woman approached him in tears. The forklift operator had recently been made a permanent employee at a Memphis, Tenn., warehouse newly opened by a supply-chain logistics company.
His new supervisor was friendly to him, giving him special assignments and sometimes grabbing lunch with him. Partee thought perhaps he himself could eventually become a supervisor.
But he was about to make a decision that would upend his life. The woman, Tiffany Pete, asked Partee if he would serve as corroborating witness in a sexual harassment complaint against their supervisor. Partee was apprehensive but says he had seen his supervisor make lewd comments to women at the warehouse nearly every day, telling them what to wear and propositioning sex. He agreed to help and to speak directly to the supervisor.
Within days, Partee was fired, along with Pete and two other women who had complained about being harassed. “I was thinking about not getting involved because I had a feeling that something like this would happen, and it did,” said Partee, who eventually won a lawsuit against the company filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “But if a woman is crying, I’m not going to do nothing.”
Caught in the middle of workplace sexual harassment are often people like Partee: witnesses who struggle with how to respond. The scandals sending shockwaves through Hollywood, and the media and political worlds have left in their wake people who have expressed remorse for failing to do more to stop the inappropriate behavior of powerful men.
Among them are Charlie Rose’s executive producer, Louis C.K.’s longtime manager, and Billy Bush, who has apologized for laughing along when President Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals on the Access Hollywood tape.
Lost in the conversation are the stories of people in more ordinary workplaces who do speak up — and what happens next.
Often, according to lawyers who litigate sexual harassment cases, they end up facing the same repercussions as the victims they were trying to protect. Some are labeled disloyal and denied career advancement. Others are fired. While the law prohibits retaliation against witnesses who oppose sexual harassment, it can be difficult to prove their case in court. Lawsuits typically take years to resolve.
The dynamic ensures that many people stay quiet, particularly among working-class people who can least afford to lose their jobs, said Faye Williams, the regional attorney for the EEOC who oversaw the lawsuit on behalf of Partee and the three women against the company, New Breed Logistics. “We find in our work here at EEOC, including our sexual harassment cases, many employees in the workplace often look the other way or choose not to get involved,” Williams said.
Partee’s case took seven years to make its way through the courts. During much of that time, he relied on odd jobs and food stamps. He was forced to move out of his apartment and into his mother’s house. He fell back on his child support payments.
As often occurs in sexual harassment cases, the EEOC had to prove that Partee engaged in “protected activity” under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that deals with sexual harassment. Specifically, the company argued that Partee did not, in fact, oppose sexual harassment because he had not formally agreed to participate in an internal company investigation before he was fired. Partee had also warned his supervisor to stop his behavior but the company argued that simply asking a harasser to knock it off did not constitute protected activity.
New Breed claimed that Partee was suspended for clocking in overtime hours without authorization. It tried to argue that the human resources official who suspended him did not know he had agreed to back up Pete’s complaint. In the end, EEOC provided evidence the official knew Pete had named Partee as a witness.
In 2015, the 6th Circuit Court of appeals in Ohio upheld a $1.5 million verdict against New Breed which has been bought by another company.
Partee received $315,000, enough for to buy a modest house and pay back child support and other debt. The father of five children, now grown, has yet to find permanent work as a forklift operator. He does not mention the New Breed case when interviewing for jobs.
“It would scare them off, like I’m a risk. So I keep my mouth shut,” he said. “A lot of people, they like to call you a snitch. They want to put that around you.”