ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230113
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
WITH COMPANY SUPPORT, Mitsubishi employees picketed the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Chicago office, denying that widespread sexual harassment is condoned at the carmaker's only U.S. factory.
Mitsubishi Motors shut down its sole U.S. assembly plant Monday and brought more than 2,000 workers to Chicago on buses to demonstrate outside a federal agency that accuses the automaker of sexual harassment.
Blue-collar workers joined managers on the company-financed 120-mile trip to picket the offices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Dozens of buses brought the workers, who were paid for the day.
The EEOC filed a class-action lawsuit against Mitsubishi two weeks ago after investigating complaints by 29 women who brought their own federal lawsuit in 1994. The EEOC said Mitsubishi management turned a blind eye to ``gross and shocking sexual discrimination'' at its plant in Normal, Ill.
Business experts said Mitsubishi's hardball tactics are almost unprecedented and may generate public sympathy for the company but probably won't affect the lawsuit.
``It's very unusual,'' said Professor Myron Roomkin, a labor expert at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. But he added, ``You can't intimidate the federal government.''
United Auto Workers President Stephen Yokich, the National Women's Law Center and the Illinois office of the National Organization for Women all accused Mitsubishi of bullying employees into taking part in its public-relations blitz.
Protesters and a union official said participation was strictly voluntary.
``I work for the best company I've ever worked for,'' said Jane Hieser, 43, a body shop worker. ``I get fair wages. I get fair benefits. There's an opportunity for me to move up. I get better backing as a woman than I've ever gotten before.''
The lawsuits allege relentless harassment of more than 300 women who worked at the plant, including insults such as ``whore,'' demands for sex and retaliation against whistle-blowers.
Employees who chose not to participate in the demonstration were required to attend company-organized training sessions on sexual harassment, said Patricia Benassi, an attorney for the 29 women who filed the first lawsuit.
Protester Kathleen McLouth, 42, a parts deliverer, said she knows eight of the 29 women who sued. ``Most of these lawsuits are women looking for easy money and they don't want to work for it,'' she said.
McLouth said sexual harassment at the plant ``has got to exist. You can't have 4,000 people and not have it exist. But if it's turned in, Mitsubishi acts on it.''
``It's the best company I've ever worked for,'' she said.
EEOC Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas said the agency would not back down.
``Mitsubishi and its employees are certainly free to express their opinions in any lawful manner. However, the EEOC will not be intimidated from pursuing this litigation,'' Casellas said.
Mitsubishi officials declined to comment.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Mitsubishi employee Eldon Berg leads chantsby CNBduring Monday's demonstration. 2. Assembly-line workers show their
support for Mitsubishi and their disapproval of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission's lawsuit filed on behalf of female employees
and ex-employees who claim they were sexually harassed on the job.