May/June 2000 Issue Number 11

Is a monthly electronic newsletter which links current events and issues to the daily challenges faced by fire and emergency services managers. Current topics in the area of sexual harassment, diversity management and conflict resolution will be discussed.

We hope that you find the information here useful and provocative.
Let us know what you think!

Leading Diverse Communities Beyond Conflict, August 24-25, 2000, Dallas, TX. The new National Fire Academy diversity course, will be offered as a pre-conference seminar at Fire Rescue International in Dallas.

"Managing Change and the Conflict that Comes With It", August 30, 2000,The Dallas-Ft. Worth Hyatt Regency Hotel. This workshop will be presented at the Department of Defense Fire and Rescue Conference.

When Culture Resists Change and Dissent

On November 18, 1999, a bonfire structure built by Texas A&M students for a pre-football game celebration collapsed, killing twelve students. An investigation into the cause of the accident attributed responsibility not to individual students or administrators involved in the project, but instead to "an insular university culture developed over decades that was resistant to change and outside criticism."

"This failure has roots in decisions and actions by both students and university officials over many, many years," said the investigatory commission chairman, Leo Linback. The bonfire tradition, which goes back 90 years, began as a small trash fire to celebrate the annual rivalry between Texas A&M and the University of Texas football teams. Over the years, the bonfire has grown to an elaborate structure over 55 feet tall, constructed of thousands of logs. "A complex and dangerous structure was allowed to be built without controls," concluded the report.

Tradition demanded that the bonfire be built by students, even though the complexity of the structure required expert knowledge at every phase of construction. Safety guidelines, including a height restriction, were overlooked in the desire to make the bonfire bigger and better. Freshmen and sophomores were working at the top of the structure, in violation of the safety code. Students were operating heavy equipment. Students working on the bonfire were drinking and engaging in horseplay and hazing of others at the site.

It is doubtful that in the moment, most people thought they were doing anything wrong. It wasn't as if there had always been a safe, controlled procedure that was suddenly violated this year. Instead, the bonfire construction process and the culture that went with it were gradually veering off course for decades. The ultimate result was disaster and loss of life.

It is also very likely that there were people at the scene who could see the potential for trouble. It was obvious that safety procedures were being overlooked. However, the cultural pressure surrounding the bonfire event made it impossible for anyone to speak up. Those who expressed criticism or doubt would have been ostracized, ridiculed, or simply ignored.

Cultures with strong traditions and pressure to conform are much more susceptible to Groupthink, a situation where dissent is impossible and decisions go forward mainly in the interest of maintaining group unanimity. It is interesting that the investigators so clearly recognized this condition as the principal factor in the bonfire disaster. Think about fire or emergency scenes that went terribly wrong, and you will most often find the same process at work.

Source: New York Times May 3, 2000

The state of Vermont is the first in the nation to pass legislation recognizing civil unions between gay and lesbian couples. This legislation, which passed 79-68 in the state legislature and was signed by the governor, grants nearly all the rights and benefits of marriage to gay couples, including the ability to make medical decisions on behalf of a partner, the right of inheritance without excessive taxation, and the right not to testify against one another. The law also requires couples who have registered as being in a civil union to assume one another's debt and pay appropriate child support. The state law does not affect federal benefits such as social security.

Source: The Denver Post April 26, 2000

The Equal Opportunity Harasser

Can people be guilty of harassment if they are generally unpleasant and intimidating to everyone they work with? When personalities, leadership styles and just bad moods factor into workplace discrimination, the distinction between harassment and bad social skills becomes murky.

Courts to some degree do recognize the "I'm a jerk to everyone" defense against harassment. It is not illegal to lack social skills. Harassment is only recognized by the EEOC if it is directly linked to discrimination against a designated protected class. At the federal level, these protected classes include sex, race, color, ethnicity, religion, age, and disability. State and local governments may recognize other protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation or marital status.

If someone is a jerk or a bully to people generally, there is no specific protection offered under EEOC guidelines. However, the law is clear that behavior may be considered harassment if it has the purpose or effect of interfering with another person's work performance or creating a hostile or intimidating work environment. If a person tells sexual jokes to everyone, but only the women on the job are intimidated or marginalized at work because of them, there may still be grounds for a harassment complaint. However, in one recent race-based complaint, discrimination was not found by the EEOC because the supervisor in question had behaved badly in a similar way toward people of all races.

A number of state legislatures are now exploring laws that would make bullying of others in the workplace illegal, regardless of who was doing it to whom. So far, most of these laws have failed in committee. There seems to be an attitude that those who are intimidated by tyrants or bullies at work are somehow at fault themselves, for not being tough enough to take it. This type of legislation has been successful in Great Britain, which now takes strong stand against workplace bullying generally.

In the end, it just makes sense for employers to insist on a workplace that does not deliberately exclude or intimidate anyone. In a world that is becoming more diverse by the day, it becomes harder to predict what effect questionable behavior will have on an individual. The best course of action is to train supervisors to behave professionally and effectively resolve conflicts as they come up, and to foster a workplace culture that makes it acceptable for an individual to speak up and be heard when someone's behavior crosses the line.

Source: The Wall Street Journal March 10, 2000

© Linda F. Willing, 2000