NW Lawyer - July 2018

forward and asserting their rights.

We’ve got these laws on the books. They’re there for a reason. They’re there to protect people. There’s a metaphorical and, in some cases, a literal contract in the workplace. I go to work. I do my thing. Hopefully, I get along with my coworkers. Maybe I don’t, but I get paid. I go home to my family. So when you’ve got a boss or coworkers that mess with that equation—that put impediments in front of you going to work and doing your thing and earning a living to provide for your family—I’ve got a problem with that, and so does the law, thankfully.

When people come to my office, the first thing that I tell them is I just commend you on the strength that it takes to pick up the phone, or to get on the internet, to make an appointment with the lawyer, come down to my office, and sit across this conference table from me to talk about this horrible treatment that you may have endured.

I was at the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Com-mission] for four years as a senior trial attorney, and I worked cases in eastern Washington where you’ve got four men that literally rule over little fiefdoms within the orchards. They have absolute power over the workers in their charge. If they choose to call out a young woman, or several young women, and to abuse them horribly, unfortunately, they feel emboldened that they can do something. And it’s sad to me, that in the current climate, that victims of rape would be reluctant to come forward to law enforcement for fear of deportation.

But the good thing about the law, Title VII, and Washington Law Against Discrimination: it doesn’t care whether or not you are documented. The bottom line is if you are abused in the workplace, you’ve got recourse. So we talk about #Me Too, and the movement as if it’s a monolith, and it’s not. You’ve got this issue of intersectionality, in that you’ve got women of color—black and brown women—that are experiencing sexual harassment in a way that, perhaps, their white peers, their white counterparts, aren’t.

It’s, I think, obvious to everyone in the room that as #Me Too began, we were dealing with beautiful white actresses, rich folks, that are coming forward with their stories, but the stories are painfully familiar in a way. But you look at black and brown women that have perhaps similar stories to tell, and for whatever reason, they’re marginalized. We don’t give their stories the same credence.

So as we look at #Me Too, as we look at claims in the workplace, I would hope that we would evaluate and look at the claims on par, without regard to whether or not we are dealing with a Caucasian woman, a black woman, whether you’re rich,

whether you’re poor, whether you are a high-powered executive, or an hourly worker, and to listen to these folks as they come forward with their stories, and make things, hopefully, better for everyone.

ELIZABETH VAN MOPPES:

So it is an incredibly difficult thing to make a complaint,
and then to meet with somebody you’ve never even heard of
before, and tell them an incredibly personal event, or series of
events that you’re pret-
ty sure this person is
not going to believe, or
has already been paid
off by the employer to
not believe. ... I get that
question a lot right
off the bat.
“You’re being paid by
the employer, by my
boss. Why should I
even tell you anything?” And I will tell you exactly what I tell
them, or what I will tell you if I ever have the chance to meet
you if you have a complaint. I am here as an independent
investigator. Yes, my time is being paid for by your em-
ployer, but your employer has a legal duty to look into your
complaint, and they have a legal duty to make sure that that
investigation is done as independently and fairly as possible.
My job is to determine the facts. It is not to determine the
law. It is to determine whether or not a policy has been violated.
Hopefully, there is a policy, there is a handbook. That’s another
story entirely. I talked to this person. I will spend anywhere
from two hours to, the longest I’ve ever spent with any witness
was 18 hours. Getting their story, getting [the names of] their
witnesses, and then I will go meet those witnesses. …
It’s not usually he said, she said. There are usually a lot of
other factors that come into play. There’s almost always doc-
umentation. There’s almost always a witness to somebody’s
demeanor. There’s almost always something in a timeline that
doesn’t play out, someone who says this happened during
this time frame, but it just isn’t going to work that way. I put it
into a report, and I give that report to the employer. Whether
or not the employer chooses to share it with the employee is
up to them, or up to Jamal, and I have nothing to do with that
part either. And then I step back, and I wait for Jamal to call
me and put me on the stand.

JAMAL N. WHITEHEAD:

I don’t see anything wrong with some sort of annual, or regular requirement. You’ve got OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] requirements where it talks about safe handling of heavy equipment, or how to load the boxes on the truck, all of that. So there are regular safety requirements in other contexts that workers have to undergo.