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 Class Action:
The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law
By Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler
Doubleday
$27.50, 400 pages
Synopsis
- Buy the book from Amazon
- Buy a signed copy
PRAISE:
Solicited
David Halberstam says Class Action is "fascinating and chilling, with powerful echoes of Silkwood."
Unsolicited
From Elle magazine: "Anyone who doubts that such a thing as a sexually hostile work environment exists should read Class Action. Here's a partial list of the 'jokes,' as the male miners called them, to which women workers were subjected: a guy repeatedly ejaculating on a woman's clothes stored in her locker; two foremen who drove two women into the middle of the woods in a company truck and ordered them to service them; the male co-worker who broke into several women's homes at night; the crotch-grabbers. There was such an inadequate number of portable toilets that at least one woman became severely dehydrated from avoiding fluids. 'If you want to work like a man, you got to learn to piss like a man,' a union official advised."
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[Excerpt from the book]
Day One: The Mine, March 1975
As Lois Jenson and her new coworker Clarence Mattson walked the fifty yards uphill to the main building of the Forbes Fairlane Plant, they were quickly joined by dozens of men. Most of them were streaming out of the building, dirty and tired after working the midnight shift at the mine; the rest were arriving to punch in for the day, and most of them were staring at her. Lois was twenty-seven years old, with shoulder-length wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and pale, clear skin--a Scandinavian beauty with a slender waist and an elegant long neck. She was used to feeling men's eyes upon her, but these men seemed different--almost as if they had never seen a woman before.
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[Interview with the authors]
The price of setting a precedent
Booknoise: Lois's experience reminds you that the actual members of civil rights class actions rarely benefit personally. In fact, they pay a high personal price.
Laura: Yes, on a personal level it may not seem worth it, but on a societal level its actually a very efficient way of achieving social change. Civil rights class action litigation is peaceful, it is deliberate, because all common law is based on precedent, it builds on the past rather than rejecting it outright. It links our future to our past in a cohesive but progressive way, unlike say, revolution or political coups do. It can be expensive, but not compared to other methods of social change--boycotts, violence, war. So, in light of the alternatives, class-action litigation can be an extremely effective method of achieving social change.
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