FAST AND FURIOUS
What once could take years to settle is now dealt within days to avoid public pushback
Companies are dealing with harassment claims at record speed and in front of the world,
Allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment swirled for years around former American Apparel founder and CEO Dov Charney.
As early as 2004, a reporter from Jane magazine wrote that Charney masturbated in front of her. (In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2008, Charney said he thought the conversations were “two people having a private time.”) A year later, former employees filed lawsuits that claimed he fondled himself in front of them or appeared in the office only in his underwear.
It wasn’t until summer 2014 that the Los Angeles company’s board suspended Charney as president and CEO, citing allegations of improper behaviour and misuse of company funds. By the end of the year, Charney was fired.
That was then. Now, employers are taking days, rather than months, to deal with accusations of sexual misconduct. The accelerated responses to harassment scandals reflect a calculation by organizations that any delay could cast them as uncaring or evasive — and land them on the wrong side of social media and news reports. “You want to report your bad news,” said Tracy Williams, chief executive and founder of Olmstead Williams Communications, a crisis and reputation management firm based in Los Angeles. “If somebody else reports it, then it looks like you’ve been hiding, which is the worst thing you can do.” On Wednesday morning, NBC reported its own bad news first — announcing that Today show coanchor Matt Lauer had been fired after the network received a detailed complaint Monday about “inappropriate sexual behaviour in the workplace.” Entertainment trade publication Variety later reported that Lauer had been accused of sexual harassment by several women.
That same day, Garrison Keillor said he was fired by Minnesota Public Radio after the news organization said it was notified last month of allegations of inappropriate behaviour while Keillor was producing A Prairie Home Companion.
The latest responses are not only swift but, in many cases, sweeping.
Minnesota Public Radio said it would stop rebroadcasting The Best of A Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Keillor, and end distribution and broadcast of his show, The Writer’s Almanac.
Netflix stopped production of its hit series House of Cards after allegations that actor Kevin Spacey had committed harassment and assault — in some cases toward minors — and Sony Pictures dropped the actor from his lead role as J. Paul Getty in the upcoming film All the Money in the World. Spacey’s scenes were reshot with Christopher Plummer.
And not only did political journalist Mark Halperin lose his job at NBC after allegations of sexual harassment, but Penguin Press pulled the plug on his book about the 2016 presidential election.
“The process of analyzing allegations and making determinations about misconduct hasn’t changed,” said Stephen Hirschfeld, founding partner and co-managing partner at employment and higher education law firm Hirschfeld Kraemer. “What has changed is the pressure that employers feel under right now to move quicker, to be more decisive with the decisions and, in some cases, to publicize their actions.”
Companies have several reasons to act quickly. The heightened public sensitivity to sexual misconduct after the Weinstein scandal means that brands’ reputations — and their market value — could take a hit if consumers deem that firms aren’t taking allegations seriously.
“We really are in a period where there’s heightened consumer awareness, in general, of companies’ social policies, their environmental policies,” said Rosemary Batt, the Alice Cook professor of women and work at Cornell University. “Customerfacing companies, particularly media and information services, depend on the goodwill of their consumers.”
Discrimination and harassment laws dictate that companies must take “immediate and appropriate action” when allegations are made, though the “appropriate” aspect is up to the employer, Hirschfeld said.
The law could say that a less-serious allegation and first-time offence in which the employee admits what he or she did could be used as an opportunity to educate the person and hopefully get him or her to change, he said.
But if an employee has a track record of activity or has been warned, employers normally have to fire the person, Hirschfeld said. Accusations of sexual assault, molestation or inappropriate touching should result in firing because of potential litigation and to protect the health and safety of the victim and the rest of the company, he said.
Publicizing the circumstances around a high-profile employee’s departure — as the Todayshow did with Lauer and CBS News did with journalist Charlie Rose — is “unusual,” Hirschfeld said.
In the “old days” — which Hirschfeld defined as a year ago — outsiders might hear about allegations and then an employee would suddenly no longer be with the company. But companies now find it necessary to give consumers more information so they have an idea of what happened and how it was dealt with. Employers now must perform a “balancing act” between protecting people’s privacy and making sure that those who come forward with allegations feel they are taken seriously, Hirschfeld said.