News and Announcements

Stark Lessons from Wall Street's #MeToo Moment

Oct 7, 2019 / News Item

STACY PASSERI WAS looking for a promotion. Pacific Life Insurance was hiring someone to lead sales of its insurance products to stock brokers across the country. Passeri thought she was perfectly positioned as a field vice president at the firm, marketing these same products to brokerage firms in a western region of California that stretched from San Luis Obispo to Eureka, and she was eager for a bigger role. She’d heard that Mike Dahlquist, who held her same job title, was a contender too. But there were whispers about Dahlquist, who had a reputation as a partier. Women in the office talked...

Lawsuits, #MeToo, summer associates prompt firms to rethink harassment policies

Apr 16, 2019 / News Item

In the #MeToo era and with several major law firms facing related litigation, firms are looking at improving training and policies around gender discrimination and harassment, from summer associates to partners, according to legal observers. * * * An Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP spokesperson said last spring the firm “updated and modernized our workplace respect policy to provide more clear guidance to our team regarding the types of behavior that are not acceptable and how to respond if they experience or observe that behavior.” All employees attended mandatory training on the...

Internal Workplace Harassment Claims Surge Amid #MeToo

Apr 4, 2019 / News Item

Workers who experience harassment on the job have increasingly spoken up to their employers since the advent of the #MeToo movement in late 2017, according to a report released Thursday that provides a rare look at how the campaign has fared in the private sector. The number of internal harassment complaints fielded through Navex Global, a leading provider of corporate compliance services and whistleblower hotlines, surged by more than 25% from 2017 to 2018 and made up 8.5% more of all complaints last year than in 2017. * * * The study is designed to give the 15,000 companies that use Navex...

What Reporting Sexual Harassment Taught Me

Jul 9, 2018 / News Item

When you report an incident, you’re apparently also supposed to know how it should be prosecuted. When someone broke into my home and stole my bike, I called the police, had a five-minute conversation with them to report the details, and barely ever gave it another thought. I didn’t organize my memories into “pre–bike theft” and “post–bike theft.” It wasn’t that notable of an event in my life. And the same is true for the time a professor grabbed my ass at a conference when I was a graduate student. It wasn’t a self-defining event in my life. Does that mean it wasn’t harmful? When someone...

Pursuing sexual harassers is the next ordeal, despite #MeToo

Mar 9, 2018 / Media Coverage

When Zelda Perkins signed a non-disclosure agreement with Miramax in 1998, she was sworn to secrecy about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged harassment of herself and a colleague. For 20 years Perkins stuck by the undertaking, which banned any publicizing of Weinstein’s unwanted advances. But at the end of 2017, she publicly broke that contract, jeopardizing her future and her bank account. As the dust of #MeToo settles, society everywhere is being forced to confront a problem that appears to be universal. Since the unmasking of Hollywood producer Weinstein in late 2017, it has become clear that...

The Tipped Minimum Wage Is Fueling Sexual Harassment in Restaurants

Feb 13, 2018 / Media Coverage

“When you reduce the power imbalance by giving women … the full minimum wage … a woman has greater power, greater agency, and doesn’t have to put up with everything.” Jenna Watanabe earned $2.13 an hour when she worked as a restaurant server in Utah. That’s perfectly legal because she made tips—and federal law says tipped workers can be paid a lower wage so long as their tips add up to the minimum wage for everyone else, or $7.25 an hour. But that meant Watanabe relied heavily on those tips to make a living. “My income was totally reliant on the approval of strangers,” she said Tuesday during...

How the Finance Industry Is Trying to Cash In on #MeToo

Jan 28, 2018 / Media Coverage

Accusations of sexual harassment have felled dozens of executives, but in one quiet corner of the financial world, the #MeToo movement looks like a golden opportunity. Companies that offer money to plaintiffs in anticipation of future legal settlements are racing to capitalize on sexual harassment lawsuits. That is setting off alarms in some quarters because the industry, like payday lenders, has a history of providing cash at exorbitant interest rates to customers who need the money for living and sometimes medical expenses. The largely unregulated companies have operated with less public...

When #MeToo Becomes Catch-22

Jan 24, 2018 / Media Coverage

A number of high-profile men have recently lost powerful positions over their alleged sexual misconduct. But for female victims of harassment, speaking up often is just as career damaging. Managerial women who report such abuse can struggle to regain their professional momentum. To escape toxic work environments, they frequently quit or exit entire industries, and some choose different professions, according to interviews with lawyers and women who have experienced sexual harassment at work. When women resign due to sexual harassment, their earnings tend to stall or decline, an academic study...

New York City Commission on Human Rights: Outten & Golden LLP Written Testimony on Workplace Sexual Harassment

Dec 30, 2017 / Media Coverage

Audio: Kathleen Peratis interviewed regarding Non-Disclosure Agreements

Dec 20, 2017 / Media Coverage

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