BRING IT ON! – Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training
BRING IT ON
– Who is responsible for Sexual Harassment Training?
Let’s face it, Women are naïve and add a good amount of pride they sometimes do things which get them into some bad situations.
I had hoped to complete a post called “The Wild West” which examines the similarity of the American West and Trucking with regards to the introduction of Women but I was distracted yet again.
Sweeping things under the rug just makes a big lump in the rug. Eventually, people trip some may fall and others might try to sue! Some legal action may be warranted from that lump of dirt but leaving it there makes it visible to others who might see an opportunity for a frivolous lawsuit.
When is it time to pull that rug outside? Sweep the dirt out, shake it and beat it with a broom? After the first lawsuit? 10, 20? 265?
I worked at Disneyland and boy people sure want to sue them. Some folks save all year, sometimes a few years to take the family on the great American Road Trip to see Mickey. The reality check comes when they arrive & Goofy does not open the front doors for them and they have to walk a mile from the parking area to the hotel with all the kids screaming to go potty.
Enter the Hotel Lobby to see 800 other families with screaming kids who are hungry, hot and come to find out Pluto does not swim in the pool like he does on your brochure, your room is not ready and it will be several hours because the 800 families who came last week have not checked out yet. OH BOY! Guess who gets yelled at?
There are a number of things going on in the scenario above:
1. High Stress Level
2. Disoriented Environment
3. Miscommunication
4. Misleading Advertising
5. Being Naïve
Who has the power to control of this situation? This is where good training comes into play when things get heated.
I use this “G” rated example to lead into truck driver training purposely because I see the same thing with Women entering this industry who have been misled from advertising and recruiters to think its one big party to be a trucker.
I see recruiting techniques that advertise both trucking jobs targeting women and “Date a Trucker” on the very same sites. I see job placement agencies encouraging “Displaced Homemakers” who are Women who have maintained a household for many years and for whatever reason are now unmarried and have little or no job skills.
Enter Job Placement recruiters who offer a free voucher to pay for CDL School making light of the REAL work required to become successful in this industry.
While it’s true that anyone with the ability to listen and learn can become a trucker in my opinion there are other elements to this job that Women may not be prepared for.
I’ve covered the obvious in many of my other posts but let’s talk about some other scenarios:
A Woman recently Divorced after 25 years of Marriage has little experience and is encouraged to go to CDL School from her Unemployment Office. She gets a good Male trainer and he teaches her everything she needs to know. She begins to romanticize about his concern for her learning. He does not make a pass at her but this makes her like him even more. She initiates sex and wrongly assumes they will ride off into the sunset together. At the end of her training period she assumes they will drive as a team together but he has no intentions of running as a team. She is hurt and angry and feels used. He goes to pick up another female student and she becomes angry and reports him for harassment.
Was she naïve? Yes
Who is in control here? Both of them
Who is the professional here? He is, he is the teacher, she is the student. Proper training for him would help him recognize the situation he was about to get himself into and get her off his truck before it got out of hand.
Anyone from a corporate environment who has had Sexual Harassment Training has learned this but it does not exist in trucking yet increased recruitment of Women does. See a potential problem?
Who knows trucking?
Even a street smart gal gets her heart broken from getting too caught up in a tryst. Let’s face it ladies, trucking provides a lot of anonymity and that’s a big attraction for a “player” OR someone who thought “YOU” understood it was fun while it lasted.
But let’s get back to “Street Smarts”:
1. Street Law is this: “You Snitch, You Die”
Anyone who has ever been around gangs knows that if you join a girl gang there are only 2 ways to get “initiated”.
1. A gang bang , sometimes watched by other girls in the gang
2. Beat in, where the others literally beat the shit out of you.
In some gangs it is perfectly acceptable to share, sell or trade women amongst gang members with other woman watching and sometimes participating. Is that what Women in the Trucking Industry mean when they say you need “Street Smarts” to be successful in the trucking industry?
Then there are those really “Tough Girls” who think they are “One of the Boys” … Guess what… “YOU are NEVER one of the boys”! I don’t care if you dress, talk, walk or act like a boy, your males buddies are wondering what it would be like to have sex with you and may have discussed it with their friends when you walked out of earshot, and sometimes NOT in a good way.
Some of the toughest bitches I know have been raped because they thought they were “One of the Boys”, got drunk with Guys who were as tough as them who they thought were just like brothers to them.
The “Tough Girl”, “The Woman Scorned” and the “Rolling Cathouse”, all Women, all part of the trucking industry and every other industry as well.
Professionalism, Training and Self-Control alleviates much of this mess.
In my US Xpress comments on the original post I mentioned my conversation with a former Driver/Trainer who told me when he was assigned a Women to train he brought his Wife to meet her. After 30 minutes, his Wife would determine if she was here to Work OR Play. He told me that many times she took him aside and said “If you let her on your truck you will be getting Divorce papers!” He was happy to report he is still married. He no longer trains women at all because the quality of female recruits to trucking has declined and he began to fear for his life and his marriage.
That is the result of misleading advertising directed at Women entering Trucking.
Lack of suitable female trainers? You can refer again to poor recruiting tactics and lack of support from in-house staff. Recruiting Truck Drivers and portraying dating ads only complicates the issue further.
Again, this is an overall industry failure. Recruiting Naïve people has always been a tactic as far as I can tell but this time it’s biting back. Covering up , blaming the student. Who is in the power position?
Consider this scenario:
Single Woman attends orientation. No money, arrives on greyhound with all her belongings in boxes. Safety department person observes her acting giddy and follows her to her motel room. He was formerly in law enforcement in the same city where she is unfamiliar with her surroundings. He drops his pants and tells her to perform oral sex. She refuses but it is clear he will be her superior at this company.
Who do you believe?
The homeless woman who was joking around the night before with “The Guys”?
OR
The former law enforcement professional who is now a safety director at a large truck carrier?
Was he watching her the whole time and knew she was a perfect target because of how “outgoing” she was?
Did she “Bring it on”, Does “She deserve it”?
There are still many guys who think getting laid means getting a girl drunk and hoping she passes out so they can screw her. There are still plenty of Women who believe she “deserves it” and would not step up and speak out.
There are many naïve women and manipulative women who will make false allegations to harm someone but it takes two to “tango”.
Are Women Truckers expected to go to Charm School prior to CDL training?
Additional Reading:
Ethics: When falling in Love falls out of bounds
Stanford University Sexual Harassment Policy Online
Related posts
17 Responses to “BRING IT ON! – Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.
Awsome!!! EVERY Driver should read this! Especially the women! There were some very familiar statements there! Thanks You Thank You Thank You!!!
Jan McCarter´s last blog ..The Keystruckers Welcome YOU!
An excellent article, Desiree! Some very good valid points were made, and as a “displaced home-maker” who became a trucker, I can relate to much. Thank you!
NJKatwoman´s last blog ..Kitten Luv
Non-Coed training trucks would be a good start but bringing serial rapists, abusers and their enablers to justice would be even better.
Exactly! Serial Rapists , Predators and their Enablers would help.
Training Women to “Listen” from day one and “Stop!” trying to Dominate each other would help also to make a more effective training process.
Women need to realize their are their own worst enemy when they bicker, esspecially in this very crucial training period.
Despite what your recruiter implies, this first few months is crucial you bite your lip and listen.
I’d rather have “2 Hens in the Hen House” than be stuck with a predator working in collusion with in-house staff or enabling women in the trucking industry who conduct this “1st Wife of the Polygamist Cult” management style.
Great post! Of course trucking companies are responsible for this sort of training, but their goal is to get people trained and get them on the road with no concern for much of anything else.
Ten years ago there weren’t enough women trainers to go around, that shouldn’t be an issue now. A co-ed training truck shouldn’t be allowed over the road. Local training, home every night may not be perfect but better than the enclosed, no privacy of a truck sleeper, usually with someone on a power trip or control issues.
Life on the Road´s last blog ..Another Bad ATA Idea…
Part of the reason there is a shortage of Women Trainers is because the poor recruiting that is taking place.
This stems from the very same entity that implies they were created to help Women which is Ellen Voie’s “Women in Trucking”.
Becoming a trainer after only a few months of trucking experience yourself and taking on a student who has had little behind the wheel time & who mosy likely has been misled during recruitment is a reason good trainers are hard to find, esspecially female trainers.
Then you have the control freaks.
If it is true that recruiters get paid only after the student is employed 5 to 6 months it stands to reason that success does not pay, turnover does, but at what price?
The industry does not care obviously and I am understanding that some Women have been encouraged to go to CDL School who were residing in Domestic Violence Shelters, then put on a truck to be trained by a predator.
Recruited from a trauma into a trauma.
That’s just sick!
To watch the saga of a woman or man who refuses help and chooses to remain in a relationship where they are emotionally and/or physically abused is heart rending but it is sometimes the hardest thing in the world to protect someone from themselves. Like any walk of life of any gender, I have met people in this industry, who I would trust with all that I hold sacred and I have met those who none should trust to clean dog mess off the sidewalk. It is a sad state of affairs that anyone’s frailties should be taken advantage of but it seems that this is an extremely ugly side of the whole human condition. I have heard it said “You deserve what you allow.” While it may sound coldhearted, there is truth in it’s sentiment. If you are not willing to stand up for, respect and protect yourself, you can not expect anyone else, through the implementation bureaucratic policies or law, to do it for you. I agree wholeheartedly that there should be policies implemented, changed and/or strengthened to punish perpetrators of sexual harassment but like the old goes “It’s only illegal if you get caught”. While education does help broadens ones understanding of what is or is not acceptable behavior, policy or law in and of itself does very little to nothing to “protect” anyone from harm. The only one who can protect you is you. We can sit in hour upon hour of Sexual Harassment Class but is a sad state of affairs that some do not learn until AFTER we have allowed ourselves to be violated.
They have video presentations for Mountain Driving, Winter Driving, Exiting the Vehicle, everything under the sun but nothing to educate a person who has never worked around Women that it’s not okay to take whatever you want.
This is on the increase in all parts of our society, High Schools, Army, and mostly because “Shhh we shouldn’t say those things”
Not talking let’s Uncle Pervy go undetected for generations ….. everyone walking aroun thinking they are “they are only one” then they find out years later , it was everyone in the family but no one ever talked about it because it was no polite.
Time to start talking people.
admin´s last blog ..BRING IT ON! Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training
A friend and I were discussing why there seems to be a culture in this industry, especially among the skag Mega Corporations, of on the one hand seeming to reach out to emotionally frail, down trodden and abused woman, giving them the hope of self sufficiency and on the other hand placing them in harms way and then further abusing them by ruining their reputation if they dare complain about the situation. With the frequency with which this seems to be happening it appears that this is a systemic problem nurtured and condoned by the powers that be. If this is true what would be the purpose for a system of such monstrous abuse and ostracism? It is almost as if the good ol’ boy network, being forced to hire woman, are try everything they can to push them out the door as soon they have padded their EEOC quotas. Now why would they do such a despicable thing? For the answer perhaps we need look no further than the nonsecular attitudes of the leadership of some of the largest of these Mega Corporations. If a woman’s place is in the kitchen, she doesn’t need to be running around the company in a big ol’ truck when she should be home, birthing babies under the thumb of her man. The only way to get her back there is to make her is to make her life more miserable that it was before she decided to set herself free.
Here is what sort of Guidance Ellen Voie suggests in Transport Topics which is what people in the Industry read:
This is very sad to think Women Truckers have this representation, I’ve heard more disgust out of Men who read this article. It’s very disturbing:
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/basetemplate.aspx?storyid=23546
UNBE-FRIGGIN-BELIEVABLE……
Sifting through this lapdog wench’s voluminous rhetoric, basically what she is saying is, “Systemic rape and abuse is part of the learning curve and resistance, to “leadership’s” rapist enabling inaction, on the part of the abused and their representatives, is the basest of primitive human emotion.” Her advice for the raped and abused, who brought their torment upon themselves by daring to challenge the established good ol’ boy network, is for them to “sit down, shut up and suffer in silence” until more women, like herself, reach positions of “power”.
To assume that things will be any different, should this happen is completely asinine. This is akin to slaves who willingly fought along side their masters on the side of the Confederacy, during the American Civil War. As long as the current slave masters stay in power, adhering to same system of tyranny, while the slaves who fight beside them may enjoy the fruits of their masters favoritism, they are still slaves and have done nothing but hinder the struggle of their fellow human beings.
You can read some of my story here http://thekeystruckers.com where these kind folks have allowed me to use up their bits as I pour out my life for all to see. I grew up in a world where Mega Skag Corporate “Trucking” companies did not exist. A world where Werner was actually a TRUCKING company worth working for, that is until the feds twisted their legs off and I personally believe that was the birth of the mega-corporate culture that exist in the trucking industry today. As I said the world of trucking was completely different as I was coming up. The companies that I have worked for were all on the smallish side and I had only worked with one woman and I am said to say she ended up being fired for damage she had done to the equipment, due to her inexperience. She was a recent “truck driving school” graduate who my boss took a chance on. Other than her, there were very few woman drivers I had the opportunity to meet and any interactions with them were the usual (for the times) trucker greeting in passing.
A few years ago, I made the mistake of going to work for a Mega Skag Corporation based out of Salt Lake (Gee, I wonder who that could have been?) with the intention of becoming a trainer. I lasted all of a month, almost to the day. In that short amount of time, I was given a small glimpse of the crap that is going on. I was repulsed simply by the mind numbing propagandist cursory “training” that these people were receiving. There were daily orientation class interruptions from the lease/purchase department inviting people to get off of “class” so they could come look at the pretty trucks and talk to them about the oodles of money to be made as a lease operator.
The minor blurb of a sexual harassment presentation pretty much amounted to the absolutely ridicules “Sex is not allowed on any truck owned by C.R.England, even between legitimate consenting couples.” There were rumors among the drivers of claims of trainers sexually harassing a student but never anything that I could substantiated during the week that I spent at the Salt Lake Terminal.
Very touchy subject at any level. Over upon Twitter I was speaking with an organized ‘Women in Trucking’ member about this exact topic. I myself am a member of the trucking industry. And I find that more and more, I see and hear women being disrespected whether in person, or even over the CB radio. Its sad to know that there are shovanistic men who can still disrepect women even in modern days. Most men will never grow up or come to the fact that they should think with the head on their shoulders, not the one in their pants. Its male ego and you all, just as I do, know how it works. I really can acknowledge the gang scenario first hand since I grew up around and in a gang myself. Never did I participate, but witnessed females being told they’d be part of the group just the same if ’sexed in’. What a crock of crap. They were tormented, and used as guppies for this and that and so on throughout the entire time they hung around with fellow members. In comparison, this era of ignorance will continue to happen today and tomorrow in trucking and other career fields. If not only men, but women as well DON’T begin to respect themselves and others as people and not as a piece of ass, we can consider this nonsense normal until YOU step your game up. Let’s grow up people.
Hello Marcus:
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Part of the reason I wanted you to make your remarks here are because of the “Gang” mentality that few people understand when phrases like “Street Smarts” are used.
This has a very different connantation to people who have lived around gangs as opposed to industry women who use the term “Serve in Silence” which in some religions means “Cover up” what you know is wrong.
You mentioned “Women in Trucking” and I have to clarify the confusion. Our twitter tag is @WomenTruckers & there is actually a Non-Profit Organization called “Women in Trucking” which is tied to ATA (Not Known to be driver friendly let alone Women Friendly) with a twitter tag @WomeninTrucking which is more of an industry feel good organization. There is quite a bit of info which has been exposed recently about their “Positions” here on this site.
The best I can gather it’s sort of like when the ladies at the yacht club dress up as biker chicks for their annual party.
The gang environment for women is like you said being ‘Sexed” or “Beat” in & unfortunately some women in trucking believe that is part of becoming a truck driver so they feel if they protect the guys who conduct this behavior they are “One of the Boys”.
This makes a small population of scum be insulated. Not even other guys can tolerate listening o some of the crap but leadership occurs from the top down.
You and I know when Women protect a predator they are only acting as bait and they are never considered equal only a pawn to conduct dirty work and will be left holding the bag at some point when the shit hits the fan.
Bros before Ho’s so to speak.
Women who see other Women in this manner are a huge part of the problem and only prolong advancement of all Women.
Men who disrespect Women, disrespect all Women. They are only able to manipulate some Women to do their bidding willingly.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment. I think Women need to hear some raw truth from men so they can begin to realize they will not be respected by men until they show respect for each other.
[...] Bring it On – Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training [...]
[...] Bring it On – Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training [...]
[...] judgment on everyone else who does not eat, pray and love like ourselves inspired me to write “Bring It On – Ethics in Sexual Harassment Training “which by the way is almost non-existent in the trucking industry yet violence against women [...]