27th of Oct 2006
Employment Non-Discrimination ACT
The question needs to be asked of every state Representative and Senator; why has the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) not been passed successfully?
It is a shame that people in the freest country in the world have to worry about being fired from their jobs based solely on their sexual orientation (perceived or factual). There should not be any person in the House of Representatives or the United States Senate who does not support a bill that only hopes to add to the already list of protected classes of people, sexual orientation. When bigotry rears its head, no matter under the veil of Christian acts or under the white capes of a group as foul and nasty as the Kue Klux Klan; a person being discriminated against needs protection against loosing their jobs. Support of Employment Non-Discrimination ACT does not ratify their beliefs of homosexuality. Simply put, this bill means that people should not have to fear for their lively hoods because of their factual or perceived sexual orientation.
If you have ever been discriminated against, then you understand the pain and anguish that never really goes away. I know most of you are wondering, how could I have experienced such biased. Discrimination hurts more than just the people who hate and the people who receive that loathing. It hurts all the other people who bare witness and either add to or walk away.
I worked for a small software company called SandPoint, Inc., which was a division of Thompson Corporation. I accepted my job supporting large scale customers on a Lotus Notes platform that listened to all news feeds and allowed the customer searching capabilities for news stories that might interest them (i.e.: Nike might want to make sure one of their spokes personalities did not break the law while on a vacation in Europe, they could place an agent in the search parameters looking at all of the news feeds for the person they are watching. The United States Government might want to keep track of any political activity in a certain country or of a person of interest to our government).
SandPoint offered me, at a young age, the ability to learn a network platform that was becoming increasingly popular as well as joining an innovative software company. My training was to be conducted by a co-worker, Bob Nagle. At first I didn’t understand why Bob refused to train me on any of the systems, but teaching was not his forte. Our boss, David, was a good man and ended up answering most of my daily questions to a product offering that could be easy and complicated simultaneously. Prior to my hire, Bob and David both worked out of the Server Room, however, advancements in the software as well as limitations on the number of people occupying the server room made it prudent that we work from our desks that were side-by-side in an office. Bob’s initial refusal to work with me had more to do with habit and desire rather than phobia based on a bias. Dave had instructed Bob to work in our combined office so that he could listen and direct my support calls ensuring that our customers received the most adequate support we could provide while training me on the servers, systems and products we offered our clients. Bob’s refusal to follow those instructions provided great anxiety for my role in addition giving Dave more burdens to manage on top of his already full set of tasks.
When I read about the Boston to New York AIDS Ride I wanted to get involved for many reason, but the top of my list was to dedicate to the living memory of a good friend (Rob) who had been living with HIV and AIDS for more than ten years. I started my training and change some habits like riding my bicycle to work every day that I could instead of driving my car. As more people identified with my training and the questions started, I knew eventually I would have to tell the people I worked with what I was doing. I came to a point where I needed to start my fund-raising efforts knowing that physically I would be able to succeed at the three day three hundred mile ride. While I was not hiding my homosexuality, I didn’t advertise it either. I wrote a sincere, honest dedication to a dear friend who had suffered from this deadly disease and explained how the funds we secure in the ride will help thousands of local people that might live in their communities. I decided to ask my boss for permission to fund raise at the office and he said if Mike the President allowed me too, he had no objections. As I nervously discussed the event with Mike, he became excited about a three day, three hundred mile ride and I explained the details as I knew them to be. He was thrilled at my efforts to perform a 300 mile ride and had no reservations to my solicitations of our employees for the necessary funds to perform this fundraiser. He asked many questions about the ride and my training and how I was doing and he said to place his name on the list of contributors for a two hundred dollar donation.
Invigorated by the kind words from Mike and then from my boss - Dave, so I emailed the dedication letter to everyone and printed a copy of it with some brochures placing them in the break room for everyone to peruse. The response I received was huge with nothing but support from most of the people with whom I worked. The story I wrote seemed to tug at the heart strings of most people in the office, which contrast shapely to the harshness of Bob’s reaction to my efforts. Bob immediately made it clear that he felt only gay men had HIV/AIDS and because I was doing the ride, I must be gay and therefore I must also have AIDS. I went from a “Bob didn’t like anyone” type of mentality to the most hated and reviled person in the SandPoint office based solely on his prejudices. The effects were felt instantly, but it took several months before I understood what brought about the change austerity. As more and more people were discussing the Ride and my training with me, Bob’s anger grew more intense. Shortly before the actual Ride in September of that year, I went to ask Bob about a problem I had been trying to figure out for one of our customers when I arrived at the server room door as it was slightly ajar in its normal fashion. Bob was on one of his tangents with another equally bitchy employees (we called this the old hens bitch session because he held them so frequently). I was about to enter when I heard him say, “You can’t trust anything he says, he’s just a faggot”. The shock was apparent as I opened the door at that very moment only to witness his jaw drop as they viewed my face but then I then turned around slamming the door shut behind me.
I knew things were getting tense between Bob and me, but I thought after the ride was over things would calm down. However, I knew based on continued responses from Dave that he was becoming weary of our friction. He needed me to work with Bob and as much as I tried to tell him that Bob refused to teach or work directly with me, I knew it placed Dave in a very difficult position. Dave would tell us both when he found us in the server room to work from our office, but Bob’s refusal never seem to garner as much attention as my presence did in the server room. Bob’s continued repudiation about training me worsened as I was started getting the ideal that my job was in serious jeopardy. The closer it got to the Ride, the more stressful the office became. Too the point that I called the Director of Human Resources who resided in another office to discuss what I perceived as harassment from Bob with his continued lack of support and unwillingness to teach me the necessary elements of our jobs. We met four times to discuss what I knew to be discrimination based offenses by Bob. At the time it was more verbal abuse (the comments I heard directly) and what he was saying (untruths) to others in the office.
Because my email was on servers inside the server room where Bob and Dave sat every day, I had to assume they were illicitly reading my email messages and therefore could not write freely recapping my meetings with HR, but I continued to follow up every meeting with the HR Director. In our first meeting I announced that I was a gay man who felt Bob’s actions were solely based on homophobia. However, I was not comfortable writing that directly within the messages for fear that Bob would find justification if he read those messages. Every message indicated the dates and times and locations of our meetings due to their locations being away from both my office and his office.
I received numerous assurances from the Director of HR up to and including exactly seven days before I was terminated by him. When the time came I performed one of the most moving experiences of my life as I rode with three thousand other men and women sharing our reasons, our stories and an immense amount of grief and sorrow. I would never change my experiences there for anything in the world and wish every person in the world could have such a profound exposure to the wounds other people carry with them. I took a couple days off after the Ride and stayed in
Dave and Bob worked together for almost fifteen years before SandPoint. Dave eventually brought Bob to SandPoint after garnering the title as Bob’s son’s Godfather. I knew if it ever came to a choice between Bob or me, I would loose on history alone.
Bob was stepping up his terrorizing campaign while Dave seemingly joined his ranks. I started looking for a job, but HR kept telling me that my job was not in danger and how he would quit before he fired me for bigoted, racist reasons. He was telling me I needed to work with him and he would protect me while we forced the SandPoint family to face their fears instead of hiding behind them. My review was good and everybody seems to like me, so the HR Director said there was no reason to run away in the face of such horrid behavior from one man. The clincher was when he said as a black man, I would never let someone’s prejudices run me out of a good job that enabled me to continue my dreams of finishing college while earning a good wage. I accepted the job with SandPoint to work in my chosen field while completing my degree. A few weeks after my last conversation with HR, I came in to find everything in and on my desk rummaged through again. Someone was searching for a reason to fire me; they just weren’t finding what they deemed a necessary reason. HR denied any knowledge of the actions and promised me I would be protected against any subsequent actions by Dave.
Three months after such a life moving event like the
The charges were possession of information I was not suppose to have. I asked multiple times what the information was on the disk that I was incapable of handling and demanded a printout of the two disk’s contents. The printouts showed exactly what I had on the disks, so they did not add anything to them, so I had to request multiple times before an attempt at an answer came from Dave. I was not supposed to have possession of the server IDs. Thinking originally that if I could give a sound answer to having those IDs, the Director of HR would see this for what it was and not allow Dave to fire me as he promised. I asked how was I to support our customers when most of them had extremely tight security and the only systems allowed to interact with their systems were our specific servers. Dave said there are specific support IDs that all of our customers had in the ACLs and therefore I should not have the server IDs on a diskette. I refuted this claim because that was where Dave wanted us to be, but most of our customers would not add those IDs to their servers, which required us to still have the necessary server IDs. This fact alone was one of the reason’s Bob continued to work in the Server Room when repeatedly told to work in our office. Bob hated having to change back and forth from our personal IDs to the Server IDs and back just to gain information in order to support our customers. I then went down the list and asked who created each of the other servers and Dave always said another person built those servers, which was a direct lie. I looked directly at the Director of HR who sat there in silence the entire time and I asked him if this was when he was going to quit before he let Dave or anyone else fire me. He said nothing and allowed me to be fired based on homophobia and hatred. I wondered who he wanted it to be easier for, me or him?
I held my composure knowing exactly what was on the two discs and knowing this was a farce, but the damage was being done none the less. It was misting outside when I left the SandPoint offices in
I called on a friend who was a good lawyer and explained everything to David to which he referred me to another friend - Terry McGenty. Terry was just starting his own practice and David felt he would be better suited to help me. Every day for two weeks I met with different attorneys in
I took on the behemoth – Thompson Corporation with a lawsuit because of its homophobia and discriminatory policies. The city of
I kept documentation for each act perpetrated against me and by whom. Who I spoke with; when, where and what we discussed. I printed out the many emails I sent to the Director of HR about our meetings and discussions. When we subpoenaed my email account, they first said they deleted it, and then they claimed I deleted most of it and sent us minor emails of no value. They didn’t anticipate that I had already replicated my email database and brought it home with me and could reproduce my entire email account.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) is not a court of law, but it is the body that tries cases of bias. You may chose to take your case outside to a court of law, but the MCAD allows greater latitude and tends to be pro employee whereby placing the burden of proof on the company rather than the employee. The MCAD hold three individual hearings on your case. You can only move to the next hearing if just cause is found by the hearing officer. Each hearing you are starting over from scratch and must prove your case as if it is your first time in court. This can prove to be very much in the favor of the employee, but a good law firm can exploit this as an opportunity to learn more and defeat the employee without failure by the third and final hearing. The trick is to give enough new information in each hearing to prove just cause, but not show all of your evidence and maintaining the element of surprise against the employer.
In the first hearing the Director of HR lied under oath saying that he never met with me in or outside of the office. He alleged that I never told him I was gay or that I was being harassed. He went on to say that I never feared being fired based on the facts that I was gay. Terry and I loved what happened next, because we then produced a stack of emails that indicated dates, times and places that we met referencing issues of harassment, and fear that my job was in jeopardy. The only thing the messages did not directly state was when I told the Director of HR that I was gay, but while the word were never used, the hearing officer agreed the implication was validly stated.
The Magistrate ended our first case finding merit to move forward and she looked at the employer’s corporate lawyer (who also was the CEO/President of Thompson
For the first time in almost a year I felt vindicated with the Magistrate’s strong findings. Terry and I knew they would make us an offer and we started receiving offers to discuss my case from news reporters, however Terry wrongfully felt this was not a good move. With no offers delivered coming from Thompson Corporation, we prepared for our next battle. The second court case resulted in similar action being taken by a different magistrate who again witnessed deceit under oath from Thompson Corporation and finding sufficient evidence of wrong doing by the company. He outlined multiple lies and miss-truths on the behalf of the Thompson Corporation brandishing an extremely harsh suggestion that they settle the case before the final hearing.
That afternoon Thompson Corporation hired the largest and most aggressive Human Resource law firm in
She was emphatic about our need to discuss something, so I indicated I would and brought what I was doing to a close. When the elevator doors closed on our way down, Donna told me she knew a great deal about me. I was intrigued and proceeded to ask about what she knew and how. She told me that her last position was as the executive assistant for the CEO/President of the Thompson Corporation for more than ten years. She elaborated on how he took my suite against them with swearing personal vengeance against me. Donna told me he was the attorney that loss the first two court appearances and that she had never seen him as angry as he was on both of those days. She also told me that as soon as he returned from the second court date, he called the law firm that was hired defend them against me and told them he would pay anything as long as they won. She told me he reserved over one million dollars to fight me initially, but that the numbers were well above that when she left the company. Donna then shocked me when she said Thompson hired a private investigative firm to following me 24x7 from the time I initially filed my case to after the final court appearance. She indicated upon her leaving Thompson Corporation there was an entire legal size filing cabinet dedicated to this case and me that she reviewed everything about me or the case. She had detailed records of dates I went on, when I had sex and with whom. She knew every vacation I took, when I left and returned and details about what I did along with details of every job I had. She knew more about my life then I could recall because she was the person responsible for transcribing the PI’s logs and notes into a legible record. I was astounded at what I was hearing. Donna told me that during the midst of this, she figured out that everything I claimed to be factual was true and she apologized to me for what the Thompson Corporation did to me and for the part she played in it.
ENDA will not ensure this atrocious behavior will not happen to another person, but if a company uses such homophobic actions against one of its employees; that person can take action against the company for their bigoted and homophobic practices. No one goes through the hell I did at the hands of a company that bought their verdict for more than one million dollars without scars. I lost my case, but that doesn’t mean it never happened or that in the process the Thompson Corporation didn’t learn from their mistakes. Shortly after the many years of hell started for me, I was asked to address a small Congressional Sub-Committee on the ENDA bill and I gladly accommodated. What I went through was mild in comparison to others people on that panel who suffered at the hands of racist men and women. The gentleman next to me was a US Postal Employee and four men beat him so severely that he almost died from his injuries. The District Court Judge who heard the case against the four men rendered a verdict in disgust, because as he states the filth in his courtroom deserved to rot in jail, but because the attack occurred on Federal property and with Federal employees, it was up to the United States Government to punish the men and there were no laws at his disposal garnering him the ability to take action against the scourge before him. The United States Government refused to prosecute the four men even though they had confessions from two of them with great details of the beating identifying their soul intent based on a perceived homosexual in their midst.
ENDA would change that and hold not only the US Government, but also every company responsible for providing a comfortable and safe working environment to all of its employees. Non-union employers still can hire and fire at will. Companies will still discriminate against employees, but ENDA gives some sliver of retribution to the employee. If the treat of that makes some employers take notice and conduct themselves in a proper manner, then isn’t the bill doing what it is intended to do? Everyone deserves to be able to work in a decent job for a decent wage without fearing for their lives. If the employer has just cause to fire that employee, they should never worry about ENDA preventing them from doing so. The only businesses who fear this bill are the ones who would be breaking it.
CALL TO ACTION:
Please call your local Representative and Senator and ask them to vote in favor of ENDA and to respect those constituents they represent.
