articles by Susan

Ozy’s problems no shocker to employees who blasted the company on Glassdoor

Just days after The New York Times exposed stunning business practices at the online journalism outfit Ozy, the company said Friday it was shutting its doors. That no doubt came as no surprise to some of its employees, who since 2015 have been excoriating the firm on the jobs website Glassdoor, citing its “toxic” culture, “bipolar management style” and conflicts of interest.

For years, I’ve used Glassdoor to get a reading on the culture at companies I’m writing about. Employees submit reviews of their employers anonymously, but when multiple employees write about similar problems, it raises red flags that I follow up on.

I’ve combed through a lot of awful Glassdoor reviews of awful companies. But I’ve rarely seen the level of employee condemnation aimed at Ozy. Continue reading →

25 Years After the ‘Boom Boom Room’ Lawsuit, Wall Street Still Has a Long Way to Go

Twenty-five years ago this month, three women at a Long Island branch of financial industry giant Smith Barney filed an explosive class-action sexual harassment lawsuit. Their complaint described a branch office where it was acceptable for men to refer to their female colleagues as “b*tches” and “c*nts”, where the boss bellowed to the troops at an office Christmas party that the branch was “the biggest whorehouse in Garden City” and where male brokers would assemble in a basement party room dubbed “the Boom Boom Room” to drink, party and engage in vulgar talk.

That suit wound up including 22,000 women by the time it settled, and women at other brokerage firms started speaking up, too, adding up to a public relations nightmare for the brokerage industry.

A quarter-century later, there is change, but women are still struggling. I wrote about it in an opinion piece today for CNN. You can read it here.

Arbitration Storm at DoorDash

In today’s forced arbitration world, plaintiffs’ lawyers can’t make any money on a $500 rip-off complaint from a single consumer or a one-off $1,000 wage and hour claim. Banning access to the courts for individual matters — while barring group claims even in arbitration — is a near-guarantee that sleazy operators won’t be held accountable.

Until now. Lawyers whose cases hit a dead-end when companies began banning class actions are using advertising, social media, and word-of-mouth among employees to track down plaintiffs and file mass arbitrations. That means that, these days, exploited employees with very similar cases can turn the arbitration game against employers. I wrote about one such case against the food delivery service DoorDash for The American Prospect. You can read it here.

 

Insurers grow wary of ‘high-risk’ executives in wake of #MeToo movement

A number of companies that sell liability insurance to cover sexual harassment are demanding higher deductibles or restricting coverage for businesses in high-risk industries such as entertainment, a new survey shows. I wrote about it today for CNBC.com.

A year ago, insurers were getting concerned about the risks they were taking on when they wrote these policies, but their anxiety has risen over the past year. This is the story I wrote about the 2018 survey for theintercept.com.

Sexual Misconduct at Work, Again — Antilla on PBS

I worked with the amazing journalists at Type Investigations, The Intercept and Retro Report to tell the story of the women who fought back after being harassed on Wall Street in the 1990s. Watch the segment from tonight’s PBS Retro Report here.

Stark Lessons from Wall Street’s #MeToo Moment

Women filed a wave of lawsuits and arbitrations against financial firms in the 1990s and early 2000s, disgusted by a culture of rampant sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The biggest cases of that era collectively drew thousands of participants in class actions and led to large settlements including $150 million against Smith Barney and $250 million against Merrill Lynch.

At a time when the long-term consequences of #MeToo on women’s careers is an open questions, I looked at court records, tracked down plaintiffs and spoke with a dozen employment lawyers to see how things had turned out for the women — and how things had turned out for the men who allegedly harassed them. My findings were sobering. You can read my story today for The Intercept here.