Threat To Workplace Harmony?
Comic hero Austin Powers is back, baby, and sexual harassment experts are concerned his shagadelic attitude toward women will catch on at the office.
"Clearly, Austin represents a time when men were unabashedly chauvinistic and sexist in their actions, opinions, and expressions," said David Sterling, CEO of Sterling and Sterling, an insurance company in Great Neck, N.Y.
While many people can't get enough of his retro style, Powers, with his quotable buck-toothed womanizing and hippy chic, threatens to impair a new consciousness about sexual harassment in the workplace, according to experts.
They have plenty of reasons to worry. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports sexual harassment discrimination claims have risen one third since 1992 to more than 15,500 in 1998. With high-profile case settlements that run in the millions, companies have to pay attention to their liability.
"It's the fastest growing coverage around right now," said Sterling, who said an average complaint settlement at his firm can be $25,000 to $50,000. "A lot of companies have either been hurt by allegations or know someone who has, so they've gotten serious about it."
Verbatim danger? "Yeah, baby!"
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, produced by Time Warner's New Line Cinema (TWX), opened Friday as the sequel to Mike Myers' popular Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. The first movie became a cult classic that has brought the clownish bravado of "shag" into mainstream vernacular. New Line Cinema officials didn't return phone calls requesting comment.
Virgin Atlantic even used the character's' favorite word, mock glamour, and English accent in its multimillion dollar ad campaign promoting the airline as "virginshaglantic," With many theaters aiming to cash in on the second installment by hosting "Shag-athons," workers may import some of Austin's casual free love vocabulary where it's not necessarily welcome.
CBS.MarketWatch.com found mixed views when we spoke with workers in San Francisco's business district the day of the premiere. Linda Lowry, an analyst at American Century, a Mountain View, Calif. mutual fund, said she didn't see a problem. "I think that if it was talked about, I think everybody would understand that it's just talk about the movie and not to take it personally," she said.
But Craig Jacoby, an associate at the San Francisco law firm Cooley Godward, said the concern isn't just a case of political correctness run amok, even though some film fans may be tempted to it with an Austin-like "Oh, behave."
"The thing that amazes me about the word 'shag' is they get away with it," he said as he emerged from a downtown coffee shop. "Why 'shag' is okay and any other euphemism that people use is not, I'm (not sure.) They're getting away with it, but I'm not sure for how long."
"There are reasons why people feel trongly about political correctness and they can get offended in the workplace," he said.
"The whole presentation and brilliance of what Mike Myers has created with the character is he makes it so easy to take it lightly. It's fine to take to take it lightly, but that doesn't mean you stop being sensitive to what effect it might have on other people or what positions you might be putting them in.".
The dreaded words "hostile work environment" are driving both insurance sales and human resource protocol in how to distinguish between bad judgment and more malicious motives, according to experts.
"Sometimes the person who is sending the message really doesn't understand and sometimes they're just being gross pigs," said Pat Fitzgerald, spokesperson for J. Howard, a management consulting firm in Lexington, Mass.
"You can't create an environment that's offensive, and offensive is a very individual and regional thing," said Sterling, who advised that companies distribute a policy to employees to sign and then keep it in their personnel files. He also recommended having a grievance resolution procedure.
"If it's inappropriate to make sexual innuendo, whether it's Austin Powers or Deep Throat, as long as there's a standard policy, companies shouldn't have too much trouble," he said.
For Fitzgerald, the movie represents what she called a slippery slope for people already inclined toward unacceptable on-the-job behavior. "For some kinds of organizations, some of them financial, where there have been harassment issues already and some people are borderline harassers, will (the movie) give them an extra nudge?" she asked.
Fitzgerald saw a similar situation when a company allowed the raucous quasi-wrestling antics of The Jerry Springer Show to be shown in the break room during lunch, she said. "A lot of people in the company were concerned about that kind of (negative) feeling in the workplace."
Written By Kristen Gerencher, CBS MarketWatch