ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150064
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mitsubishi has hired former Labor Secretary Lynn Martin to investigate charges of widespread sexual harassment at its U.S. assembly plant and come up with procedures to improve the treatment of women there.
``I will have complete independence,'' Martin said at a news conference Tuesday. ``I do not stand here today to explain or exculpate Mitsubishi from the charges brought against the company.''
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Mitsubishi in April, alleging hundreds of women employees were groped and subjected to obscene remarks and lewd graffiti by male co-workers at the automaker's plant in Normal, Ill.
EEOC chairman Gilbert Casellas said Martin's hiring has no effect on the lawsuit against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America.
Martin, flanked by company Chairman Tsuneo Ohinouye, said she will assemble a team of fact-finding experts and then present Mitsubishi with blueprints for seeing that female workers are treated properly.
The former Illinois congresswoman and labor secretary during the Bush administration would not say how much Mitsubishi is paying her.
Ohinouye acknowledged that some sexual harassment may have taken place but said it was ``not on the scale that has been publicized.'' He said the company has never tolerated sexual harassment.
He also said that a demonstration of Mitsubishi employees outside the EEOC's Chicago offices after the suit was filed was the employees' idea, not management's.
The EEOC has said that the harassment took place largely on the production floor but that management did little or nothing to end it.
An attorney for 29 women who have sued Mitsubishi separately for sexual harassment questioned Martin's qualifications.
``I don't see this as any kind of major development of any sort,'' Patricia Benassi said. ``Martin isn't a trained investigator. She's a politician.''
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., said that Martin is ``a very qualified person'' but added that she has questions about the strategy.
``I think they're really saying, `Oops, you caught us, we're going to do better in the future and we've hired Secretary Martin to make sure that we do that,''' Schroeder said. ``That's fine, but it doesn't do anything about the past.''
Martin is an adviser to the management consulting firm Deloitte & Touche and teaches at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
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