Women vs. Wall Street
(Bloomberg Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 342 pages, $26.95)
Reviewed by Gregory Bresiger
Reading this racy book about the sexual harassment of women at Smith
Barney, certain phrases kept crossing my mind: How could it have happened? You've got to be kidding me.
The author spares the reader nothing. Her reporting is impressive. She provides shocking and graphic detail. Most of what went on will not, indeed
cannot, be described here. Antilla, who has excellent sources because she covered the story as it exploded across the pages of the national media, provides chapter and verse of a persistent pattern of sexual harassment at Smith Barney's Garden City, New York branch. This madhouse brokerage had a frequently used party room called "the Boom-Boom Room."
This room, where brokers seemed to spend a hell of lot of time, had a makeshift bar as well as a bicycle and toilet seat hanging from the ceiling. One wonders how any rep ever met his or her production quotas.
While it is not surprising that there was a pattern of sexual harassment in the securities industry, a pattern that may continue to today, what is amazing is the tacit or overt institutional approval of this Animal House behavior at Smith Barney.
Any brokerage, any business, can end up with a rogue or two, male or female, as an employee. It's too bad, but it can happen. Anyone who has ever tried to hire someone realizes that it is not an impossible task to come up with a resume that looks good, yet the person turns out to be a poor hire. The kind of person who is often sent packing within a short period.
The notorious Smith Barney branch manager, Nicholas Cuneo, led the partying, the drinking and obscenities at the Garden City branch, according to Antilla.
Cuneo ran this crazyhouse and he didn't discourage the sexual intimidation of his female brokers, the author writes. He enjoyed it as much as many of his booze-loving male charges, Antilla writes.
"The Boom-Boom Room is now open. We are now serving cocktails," Cuneo would announce on the office loudspeaker just before the close of trading on Friday afternoon (page 63). Sometimes, the merrymaking would begin at 10 o'clock in the morning. To paraphrase Freud, fleeing from Vienna just before the Nazi Anschluss, "the inmates had taken over the asylum."
A woman broker, Kathleen Keegan, had been disgusted by what she had seen in her first months in Garden City. Nevertheless, one Friday afternoon she tried to join in the festivities and found obscenities written about here in the Boom-Boom Room. She confronted Cuneo.
"I'm sick and tired of this [bad behavior] that goes on day in and day out," she tells her boss. "They think it's funny. You think it's funny," she said of her fellow brokers. (page 63). Cuneo, who loved to tell lewd stories in front of everyone according to the author, says he is surprised that she is upset, Antilla reports.
"Don't tell me you're surprised. I want out of here," she tells him.
(By the way, here's another you-got-to-be kidding line: Cuneo, who retires before the notorious Boom-Boom Room lawsuits are filed, reportedly escapes with plenty of dinero and lives happily ever after. Many of the scarred women departed the industry or reportedly end up with mental problems brought on by the pattern of harassment with almost no chance of vindication.)
But the problems go beyond the branch manager. Pam K. Martens, who would be the lead plaintiff in a class-action sex discrimination lawsuit, went upstairs to look for help. In 1988 she wrote to Hardwick Simmons, then chief executive of Shearson Lehman. She warned that women "were getting fed up" with Cuneo's antics and the Boom-Boom Room. Martens received no reply.
This letter was sent well before any lawsuits and resulting bad publicity that gave the brokerage and its parent a black eye. Twelve years later Simmons – soon on his way to head up Nasdaq, where he was later bounced – said through a spokesman that he had no recollection of the letter. Maybe. But it is difficult – nay impossible – for me to believe that nobody at Shearson ever saw that letter.
Strong Woman
It is also impossible for me to believe that Martens didn't know where to send this powerful indictment of a wirehouse. She's a very determined strong woman who falls out with some of her fellow plaintiffs and is angry with some of the lawyers who she didn't believe were effectively pushing the case.
Imagine someone sent you a letter telling you there was a cancer on your business. Would you throw it away? You would certainly want to check it out. Apparently, no one did at Shearson, where it is also difficult to believe that no one at the top realized the gravity of the charges brought by Martens and other women.
But back to the notorious boom-boomers. Shearson analyst Elaine Garzarelli is subjected to various slutty suggestions by Shearson brokers and executives. Reverend Jesse Jackson steps in to help a prominent African-American woman, who is a municipal finance executive at Smith Barney. She eventually receives $1.35 million in a confidential settlement, Antilla reports.
Here is where the book, for all its many benefits and good reporting, goes off the rails. Jackson has also had his share of bad press in his treatment of women. Several years ago, for example, Elizabeth Colton, a former Jackson press secretary, wrote a book called the "Jackson Phenomenon" in which she charged that the good reverend was intimidated by strong women. She also said that Jackson would deliberately step on the feet of women he didn't like. (One interesting sidenote, Colton, in the book, remains a supporter of Jackson, even while conceding his rough side).
So while it is certainly relevant to mention Jackson in this book, it is incomplete not to mention his record on women, which can be summed up in a phrase, "Mr. Moralist, heal thyself."
It is not inappropriate in an otherwise thorough book on sexual discrimination against women professionals to mention these facts. Also, maybe I'm just holding the author to a high standard, a journalist who I respect as a capable professional. But I was disappointed that Antilla neglected to give a complete picture of the controversial Garzarelli. She correctly called the crash of 1987. But, since then, her reputation has gone down fast. In the 1990s, her analysis was wrong again and again. A fund she was given, as a reward for the correct crash signal, was a failure. Antilla, a smart reporter, knows all this but leaves it out.
Maybe I am expecting too much, but the whole issue of sexual harassment in the workplace often comes down to a he said/she said dispute. Male executives often say that women are fired because they're not good enough; that they can't keep up with the furious pace of the wirehouse existence. Women, in response, often say that the men expect them to be subservient; that they expect them to be obedient or they want them to fail. Antilla documents plenty of the latter.
The book ends on a low note, which is appropriate for this sad tale. Many women privately settle. The mandatory arbitration system – which many women contend is a big part of the problem – is mostly intact. Citigroup, the successor parent, promises to pay millions of dollars for sensitivity programs designed to prevent new boom-boom room incidents.
U.S. Supreme Court
Martens is a determined woman with many qualities that – even if one might not agree with her every point – are hard not to admire. She is what they used to call in the British House of Lords, during the constitutional crisis of the early 20th century, a ditcher. If she had been in the army of a lost cause, she would have been the last soldier standing. Martens is readying an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cuneo is in retirement "with all his benefits," Antilla tells us. The author has the research to answer a lot of questions about the Boom-Boom Room. Still, one rises from this book with an inchoate feeling. After more than 300 pages one continues to wonder: How could it have happened?
