Sex Initiates and Promotes Too (revised title)

BrooklynDodger notices that the Style section of the Times increasingly overlaps the Business section. In the style section, the pictures are more frequently women than in Business, so it's more attractive. Not clear the gender impact on readership, but women's magazines are saturated with pictures of women, not men, and don't seem to attract much male readership.

Management shills in the article angst over more lawsuits from people denied promotion because of [allegedly] relationships between bosses and other subordinates. In the article, the titillation potential arises from male bosses and female subordinates, but as culture shifts there can be lots of permutations. [Still, movies tend to feature female bosses and male subordinates, Mike Douglas makes a living on this.]

Actually, in terms of unfair treatment, what if co-workers are actually married, rather than conducting an affair. Can you sue for third party sexual harrassment in that case? and, why not if you were unfairly treated?

The article talks about management engaging in relationship policing, or rules against fraternization. Only once in a while does the superior suffer discipline in these situations.

[Anita Hill is referenced in the story. Clarence Thomas would not have made the Court had Hill been able to remember the name of the restaurant and give the date of that key conversation.]

The lawsuit problem arises because it's perfectly legal to fire someone, or refuse to promote, for no reason at all. It's illegal to victimize someone for being a minority, a women, old, blowing the whistle, and theoretically for union organizing or being handicapped. [Theoretically means it's against the law, but not the way corporate activist Judges have either rewritten the law or lie about the facts in their decisions.]

Management could mitigate unfairness generally without resorting to keyhole peeping. Establish a seniority system, establish a bid system for jobs, and set procedures to mitigate the favoritism which arises from brown nosing.

[That's not a bad metaphor, this article is about brown nosing at the other end.]

Then, the argument would only be about injustice, rather than why there was injustice.

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Love the Job? What About Your Boss?


By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: July 24, 2005
LOS ANGELES

THE pretty financial analyst just out of business school seems to catch the boss's eye. She is spending a lot of time in his office. Soon the speculation begins: Were they eating dinner together? Did he have his hand on her elbow? And suddenly the analyst is getting prize assignments and eventually a promotion.

Around them everyone else just watches and whispers. What else is there to do? Isn't that just how the world works?

Well, not in California, at least since last Monday.

In a ruling that significantly expands the law on sexual harassment in the workplace, California's Supreme Court ruled that workers can sue when a colleague who is sleeping with the boss is shown repeated preferential treatment.

Unions and lawyers who represent workers rejoiced, claiming a victory for a group some of them call "the unloved." Phil Horowitz, chairman of the California Employment Lawyers Association, said employees can no longer be "treated as second-class citizens because they're not putting out."

But those charged with managing workers in California were reaching for the Tums. Not only will management have to worry about who is sleeping with whom, but about who among them gets a bigger office, a better assignment, a promotion. And who might be stewing in resentment over it.