Truck and Barter

RAND & the Right to a Mentor

My former employer is described as a house of sex discrimination by Karen Donovan of The New York Times:

RAND now faces a sex-discrimination class action filed by a group of women on its research staff, and three years ago it paid almost $200,000 to settle a government claim that it was violating the federal law that governs health and pension benefits.

Please note that these charges are not brand new, and as the man said, "I question the timing."

Since I am not affiliated with either party, and wasn't at RAND during any of the alleged doings, I have chosen to put in my two cents, as follows:

I find these sex discrimination charges absolutely absurd, ridiculous, and unfounded.

I base my comments on my limited personal experience and interaction with others as a full-time RAND employee from November 2000 to July 2004.

What is new is the knitting by the Times author--who tries to sew together 1) the lack of a database on hiring, 2) the payment of a fine for health/pension practices, and 3) the accusation of sex discrimination in pay. But the first two have nothing to do with the latter; they do not set up a pattern of misbehavior. They are filler for a very limited case that depends solely on a single, narrow interpretation of salary data.

I find the author's portrayal of David Chu particularly offensive, since I have found him to be an analytical, straight-forward, no nonsense guy:

When Jeanne Jarvaise, one of the lead plaintiffs in the sex-discrimination suit, complained to her boss, Dr. David S. C. Chu, the director of research at RAND's office in Washington, about her difficulties in finding a mentor, she said, he told her that "finding a mentor is like having a romance: it just happens." At a deposition in February 1998, Dr. Chu, now an under secretary of defense in the Bush administration, testified that he could not recollect saying anything to that effect.

Ms. Jarvaise also complained to Dr. Chu that a male colleague undermined her by shutting her out of meetings with a client at the Defense Department when discussing their work on a project she had initiated. In the deposition, Dr. Chu testified that he did not think Ms. Jarvaise's concern was valid "because association with individuals of your choice is still a right in this country."

I find these conversations entirely possible, but I do not think they are grounds for sex discrimination. The analogy to a romance is apt; people are not paid by RAND to be mentors, so it is unclear what the organization's legal responsibility to provide one would actually be. Is there a right to a mentor? I don't think so.

Still, one blogger took these accusations--in fact the entire package--as literal truth:

RAND Corporation, one of the premiere think-tanks with over $100Mil in govt contracts every year, several of which have to do with labor issues, continues to do business with the US govt despite admitting egregious labor violations, particularly of its female employees, going back some ten years....

The Labor Dept is contracting with a corporation that has admitted--admitted--breaking major labor laws in a big way, systemically, over a long period of time, and then equating those violations with a speeding ticket??

Tra-la tra-la. In Elaine Chao's Labor dept, it's NBFD. In fact, trashing your workers, especially the female ones, is pretty much a laughing matter. Nothing to be concerned about. Back to your homes, there's nothing going on here.

So how much of that $$Hundred MIL$$ do you reckon is being kicked back into one of Chao's offshore numbered accounts?

I felt I obliged to respond:

I think you misread the article. In what way is not tabulating the number of women hired an "egregious" labor violation?

RAND has admitted to no sex discrimination; it did not even admit to guilt of technical violations (like not keeping appropriate databases so other people can count the number of women and minorities hired). Note that RAND is not accused of hiring too many white men, so this database issue is irrelevant to the sex discrimination lawsuit.

In fact, it is very clear that the plaintiffs in the case cited cannot demonstrate a written or unwritten rule or pattern of conduct at RAND that discriminated against women.

The article's author doesn't even attempt to accuse the plaintiff's supervisor, David Chu, of sexism himself, since it becomes obvious from his sworn statements that Chu is an individualist who doesn't give a damn about gender at work, and that the plaintiff was outplayed at a series of competitive games having nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with networking and getting ahead.

In your excerpt, you quote the plaintiffs statistics of pay differences, but not the absolutely critical rebuttal by the defendants that adjusting for experience will account for the discrepancy. Why not? How are you so utterly convinced that RAND's pay committees (composed of men AND women) intentionally paid women less?

Also, your description of Chao's labor department is vivid and completely devoid of fact. The absurd accusation of her taking kickbacks...

Posted at September 11, 2004 02:05 PM

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