Everything on Wall Street is excessive: buildings, bonuses – and sexual harassment of female clerical staff by male brokers. But women are striking back. Joanna Coles reports from New York
Wall Street is a place of excess: the seven- figure salaries, the soaring, self-reflecting buildings of chrome and glass, the bonuses bigger than the national debt and the motor- yachts in the Battery Park basin with names like Excalibur, Liberty and Entrepreneur II, where a helicopter roosts permanently on deck.
From here, it is a short walk past the newly opened Holocaust museum and the moving bronze monument dedicated to America’s immigrants, around the southern tip of Manhattan, to Fulton Street, where the New York office of Lew Lieberbaum & Co stands tall and proud.
A 30-storey exultation of brick and glass, it dominates the eastern end of the street on the very site where, in 1882, Thomas Edison built an historic electric plant which powered the country’s first underground station.
This month the same site witnessed another historical breakthrough, although, unlike Edison’s, this achievement will not be celebrated by a brass plaque. It was, however, observed with some alarm and not a few shudders throughout other equally esteemed brokerage houses as, flanked by his lawyers, Mark Lew, chair and chief executive of Lew Lieberbaum & Co, agreed to pay $1,75-million to settle a sexual harassment and discrimination suit brought by 17 former employees.
Although ostensibly modest compared to the telephone numbers which can be awarded in court, the sum was the second highest out-of- court settlement for an harassment claim. But more to the point, what really excited those who brought the case was that Lew was also forced to sign up every single one of his existing 200 staff for urgent training in the prevention of future harassment.
Lesbian strippers … frequent flashing … demands for oral sex by senior staff … obscenities broadcast over the office public address system … blatant preferment for those who traded in sexual favours and grotesque abuses of power by staff fuelled by cocaine … This is a case which has startled even Wall Street which revels in its machismo.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to work in an office where such astonishing behaviour was not only tolerated but actually perpetuated by some of the company’s most senior executives.
“What was so serious was that the harassment was carried on at such a high level,” says Elizabeth Grossman, a lawyer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who brokered the deal on behalf of the 17 former staff. “We can only hope that cases like this make people realise it’s worth trying to settle or go to mediation.”
For Grossman, aged 30, who keeps an emergency bottle of Body Shop soothing oil and a stress- buster ball on her desk, the settlement is yet another personal triumph. From her office on the 18th floor of one of the twin towers which comprise the World Trade Centre, she is rapidly becoming the unlikely scourge of the financial district, sniffing out harassers with a single signature on the settlement papers.
Though in some of her cases the finer details of the harassment remain confidential – the obvious attraction of settling out of court – the one against Lew Lieberbaum is an exception because there is also a separate and incredibly detailed suit, filed by three other former employees, who appear determined to see their former bosses in the dock.
The papers, filed at the federal court, read like a Michael Crichton novel with additional reporting supplied by Penthouse. Lew himself, the firm’s top man, is accused of at least three affairs with female employees, one of whom was told she could keep her job if she met him at a certain hotel.
Meanwhile, chief financial officer, Leonard A Neuhaus, had an affair with his secretary – not perhaps unusual conduct for a boss and his assistant, but on one occasion, after a noisy sex session at his desk, they sprayed each other with whipped cream and then demanded other employees clean up the debris of their passion.
“It’s always shocking when people have to endure this kind of behaviour,” says Grossman. “It takes a strong person to be able to put up with it.” It takes a strong person to challenge it too. Not one of Grossman’s complainants was still working for Lieberbaum & Co when they took the decision to register an official complaint with the commission. Those who did complain, even hesitantly, were ignored or dismissed. What made the situation impossible was that the people they were supposed to complain to were guilty of the very behaviour they were complaining about.
While Grossman’s clients decided to avoid risking legal fees and were happy to split the $1,75-million among them – with a major portion left over to help others in similar situations – Kimberly Casper, Deanna Caliendo and Linette Cinelli are holding out in order to see their old firm in court. Each claims she was “constructively dismissed” after daring to complain.
Their 50-page complaint begins with the pit, an area in the centre of the office which formed a thoroughfare through which the three women passed several times a day. It was, according to Complaint 97/3016, “composed of male brokers, many of whom, upon information and belief, were frequent drug users. These brokers sat, lurked, terrorised and preyed upon the plaintiffs by subjecting them to a daily torrent and virtual hailstorm of sexual harassment … loudly broadcasted by voice and by the firm’s microphone. The plaintiffs were routinely called `slut’, `cunt’, `filthy whore’ and `fucking bitch’ and were subjected to repeated demands for blow jobs.”
American law divides sexual harassment into two categories; the first is known as quid pro quo, where the harasser demands favours for promotion; the second is hostile environment, where the harassment creates an intolerable atmosphere. The senior managers at Lieberbaum & Co are accused of both: take, for example, the hiring of lesbian strippers mid-afternoon to celebrate the birthday of Barry S Rabkin, the first vice-president.
Casper claims that she was forced to stay in the pit and watch while her boss, Neuhaus, “made a fool of himself by poking one of the strippers repeatedly in the buttocks”. The document also reveals how one of the strippers with pierced genitals removed a labia ring which was passed round the office. The next day, one of the brokers presented it to Casper in a plastic bag and demanded she sniff it.
A similar birthday treat was organised for broker John Dabal, in which several women were asked to stay in the office as the stripper sat on Dabal’s face.
The women also complain that the men’s lavatory was accessible only by walking through the kitchen, so upon seeing a female while on his way to the bathroom, Rabkin, the first vice- president, and Fred Dorushkin, rejoicing in the title of junior partner broker, would hurl remarks such as “My snake wants to throw up”, or “Want to hold it?”, or “Want to help me?” Dorushkin would then emerge from the bathroom, not having zipped up his fly. He would regularly announce that he had not washed his hands, proceed to the nearest woman and wipe them on her shirt. When Casper complained to Lew, the chief executive, he laughed and called her “white trash”.
Dorushkin would also announce he was going to the bathroom on the office public address system informing colleagues “I’m going to take a shit,” or “My dirt hole smells,” or “My dirt hole hurts.” He would also pick his nose and then corkscrew his finger into the women’s sandwiches.
When Casper reported this to Joseph Alagna, supposedly in charge of monitoring the brokers, he replied: “Don’t let it show that it bothers you and it will die out.” When Caliendo went to him to complain after a similar incident, she says he whipped out his penis and asked her to suck it. Several of the brokers would regularly demand blow jobs.
If one of the women was on a business call, Dorushkin would frequently snatch the receiver and start shrieking obscenities down the line, even to clients. If a women received a personal call from her boyfriend, Dorushkin would tell the caller that the woman they were seeking was under the desk performing oral sex on him.
Meanwhile, Laurie O’Connor, a female sales assistant, who succumbed to Barry Rabkin’s sexual charms, received a higher bonus than the other assistants, received cash allowances and was allowed to order freely from catalogues, buy a stereo system and received numerous tickets to concerts and sporting events all paid for by the firm.
Casper claims she felt as though she was “living through a nightmare and frequently cried at work and after work”. Caliendo recalls Neuhaus trying to pull down her trousers to see if she was wearing a G-string. As she pushed him away, Dabal invited her to look down his trousers, promising: “There’s a trick or treat in there.”
The three women’s final allegation is that Lew hired “wow girls” such as Tanya Pisanello, recruited because she was attractive. “Lew Lieberbaum conducted no real interview of her. When defendant Rabkin and defendant Dorushkin spotted her in the Pit they immediately flocked to her and told her she was hired. When she asked them what she would be doing, they gave her no real answer.”
Though Lew Lieberbaum & Co rejects many of the allegations, Janine Scafo, the newly appointed director of human resources, acknowledges: “We’re not saying there wasn’t room for improvement …” Significantly, the company has also recently changed its name, to First Asset Management, though Scafo insists this was not as a result of the publicity but rather a desire to “capture the essence of the corporate strategy”. Mark Lew has also changed his name to Mark Lev.
But Scafo candidly admits: “We’re definitely off with revenues, they’re definitely lower and I’m sure it had an effect.
Says Robert Lipman, another lawyer representing four of the 17 complainants: “You get young men working for a ton of money and women making a clerical wage. It’s a power trip! I can tell you … a huge number of individuals in their 20s are making $600 000 to $700 000. It’s incredible for someone to get out of college and do that, they’re on a huge trip and the companies don’t instill them with the need to act responsibly.”
As part of its penance, staff at First Asset Management will each undergo a minimum of two hours intensive training with a counsellor on harassment awareness.