
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 8, 1994                   TAG: 9409080087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

MEN SAY WORKSHOP ENCOURAGED GROPING

The Federal Aviation Administration paid for cultural diversity training in which men had to walk past women co-workers who fondled their private parts and made remarks about them, agency employees said Wednesday.

The training, designed to turn the tables on men in an effort to sensitize agency employees to race and gender bias, went ``way off course,'' said Douglas P. Hartman, an air-traffic controller who is suing the Transportation Department.

Hartman said that in June 1992, he and other male controllers were pressured to walk through a line of female controllers who fondled their private parts and rated their sexual attributes.

``Several of the female participants apologized to me afterward,'' Hartman said. ``They said they didn't agree with it.''

Hartman filed a sexual-harassment complaint after the June 1992 workshop, but says he was stonewalled by the agency and ostracized by management. He sued the Transportation Department last week, seeking an end to the retaliation and $300,000, the maximum allowed.

FAA officials in Washington did not return telephone messages seeking comment. Alvin Ray, the FAA's human-resources manager for the eight-state Great Lakes region, said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it.

Ray said he had heard rumors of groping gantlets during workshops, but they never were confirmed.

``The FAA does not condone the things you say these people are complaining about,'' Ray said.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association filed an unfair labor practices complaint seeking to stop the workshops shortly after they began in 1991, said Joseph M. Bellino, a controller and former union official spearheading the complaint.

The workshops for controllers, and other FAA employees, are conducted by several different outside contractors across the country with the assistance of FAA employees, Bellino said.

The union complaint will be heard by a federal labor relations judge on Sept. 22 in Washington, Bellino said.

In another common technique, blacks were encouraged to go to another room, discuss their problems at the hands of the ``white-male dominated society'' and then return to the room and verbally attack a white man, Bellino said.

by CNB