Company learns hard way to take sexual harassment seriously

Prospect Airport Services didn't take it seriously when Rudolpho Lamas complained that a young female co-worker was sexually harassing him. Even worse, the company took no steps to stop it.

So the harassment continued for a year, until Lamas finally left his job as a wheelchair assistant at McCarran International Airport.

Prospect is no two-bit company. Based in Chicago, it has more than 4,000 employees in 14 airports and 13 cities.

The sexual harassment began in 2002 and, while it has taken 10 years for Prospect to get its smackdown from a federal judge in Las Vegas, the company now sees the error of its lackadaisical response to sexual harassment in the workplace, agreeing to mend its ways.

The case was settled just before trial in December, so Lamas' allegations were never proved as fact. But Prospect did not contest that Lamas was sexually harassed and that the company failed to respond to Lamas' complaint.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged that, over a year's time in 2002 and 2003, Silvia Munoz, a married woman, sent him sexually suggestive notes, gave him a seminude photo of herself, and made lewd gestures and other inappropriate actions.

Eventually, the harassment escalated to nearly every day. He complained repeatedly, but nothing was done.

One supervisor suggested he take it as a joke or a compliment. The recent widower, now 48, did not.

The company paid Lamas $75,000 in 2005 and doubtlessly paid far more in legal fees to fight the case filed that year.

U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson, in an order filed July 25, required Prospect to conduct annual training of its supervisors and to develop an anti-harassment policy. The company will be monitored for compliance for three years and must not violate the Civil Rights Act for five years.

Dawson noted that since the lawsuit was filed, Prospect took steps to make sure such harassment didn't continue, and that the woman, the relevant supervisors and Lamas all were gone from the company by mid-2006.

Lamas didn't respond to a request for an interview, and Munoz couldn't be located, but on his Facebook page he thanked the EEOC and wrote the "years of litigation and legal hell could have been avoided with a handshake and an apology back in 2003."

Last year, 16 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed nationally with the EEOC were filed by men. While the most frequent sexual harassment complaints are from women against men, there are also complaints of sexual harassment from the same sex. Much rarer are complaints by men that women are harassing them, possibly because men are reluctant to report and there are fewer such cases.

I mentioned the Prospect case in a September 2006 column when the EEOC opened its first office in Las Vegas. At that time, the 2005 tally of Las Vegas cases showed eight discrimination cases either pending or settled in favor of the EEOC.

The EEOC has settled sexual discrimination cases in Las Vegas involving Caesars Palace, Mandalay Bay, America West Airlines, Valentino's Restaurant, Timbers Hospitality Group and others.

In 2010, Republic Services paid $3 million to settle an age discrimination claim and, as often is the case, said it settled to avoid costly litigation.

Forward to 2012. Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC's Los Angeles district office, said that there are five active discrimination cases in Las Vegas and that she expects a few more will be filed this year. Not all are sexual harassment.

You would think businesses would learn that ignoring or laughing off any kind of discrimination complaint from an employee is major league stupid.

Did Prospect officials find it hard to believe a woman would harass a man?

Admittedly, I find it hard to understand. Yet not hard to believe.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.