I was quite surprised by the anger and vehemence in Robert Zeis’s opinion statement on the UPS sexual harassment case in Des Moines.

As a woman who has worked in several Iowa companies, I distinctly recall attitudes of supervisors and managers that reflected their own need to dominate and/or the company’s corporate climate of white male superiority.

I witnessed supervisors placing their arms around women workers, I witnessed managers who treated women as confidantes but not as equals, and I witnessed company-sponsored stag parties and all-male outings that focused on visits to strip bars and juice bars.

In each of these scenarios, it was justified because it was company tradition or the “company way.” In the manufacturing companies, the majority of employees were men, and if women wanted to go along on trips, they were discouraged or intimidated into declining.

Then they were told, “Well, you could have gone along if you wanted to!”

In every case, these attitudes were never stopped by the company organization. Not once did a top- level manager step in and say “this will not be taking place anymore in my company.”

No, I don’t think the jury was out of line at all. And, I agree with the reactions of the women in the news coverage that this message the jury sent, that corporately condoned sexual harassment should not be tolerated, is long overdue and was a very sane act.

Jo Ann Hendricks-Bahr

Senior

Industrial technology