Diversity Training Goes Too Far -- Faa To Pay Workers Who Suffered After Anti-Harassment Program

WASHINGTON - Taxpayers will pick up the tab for emotional injuries linked to government-sponsored "diversity training" programs that went too far in teaching workers about sexual and racial harassment.

The Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to pay $75,000 to an air traffic controller who apparently suffered a mental breakdown after her past personal agonies resurfaced when intense group discussions turned to talk of intimate sexual experiences.

And there may be more fallout ahead.

In a settlement agreement signed Wednesday, the FAA invited its employees to file claims of sick leave and medical expenses attributable to the controversial sessions. An FAA official said he expects only "a handful" of legitimate claims.

Several male controllers have complained about being forced to walk through a gantlet of women who shouted crude sexual remarks and reached out to touch their chests, legs, buttocks and groins.

FAA officials and workers have deplored the "grope gantlets," which were intended to give men a blunt lesson on sexual harassment by showing just how it feels to be teased, taunted and fondled.

One former controller, James Ferguson of Salt Lake City, said his trip through the gantlet had a grave effect on his marriage and forced his wife into therapy. His claim, stemming from a training session at a hotel outside Seattle, will get "priority consideration" under the settlement.

Ferguson said women made demeaning remarks, put their hands in his back pockets, played with his belt and rubbed his chest.

"I thought it was going to be about what people from different backgrounds bring to an organization," Ferguson said. "But instead it was white-male bashing."

Another controller, Douglas Hartman of suburban Chicago, complained of being demeaned at a 1992 training session and recently filed a $300,000 lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation. He characterized the gantlets as "political correctness run amok."

FAA officials said they have eliminated the gantlets. A DOT inspector general's report on the entire diversity training program is nearing completion.

"I am deeply troubled by these allegations," Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena said. "If true, both FAA employees and taxpayers have a right to be outraged."

Gantlets are "not what I would call common," said diversity consultant Julie O'Mara, former national president of the American Society for Training and Development. "For some people, it's a terrific, positive . . . experience . . . but in my view, it crosses over the line of appropriate training."

The agreement, which resolved an unfair labor practices complaint against the FAA by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, did not explain why the agency agreed to compensate the unidentified controller.

But Joseph Bellino, who represented the union, said she broke down during an intense March 1992 session in which employees were talking about sexual experiences.

"It brought out memories from her own life. After that, she couldn't concentrate on airplanes," Bellino said.

She took a leave without pay, went broke, lived for a year in the back of a truck, underwent psychiatric care and spent 10 days in a psychiatric ward, Bellino said.

The agreement commits the FAA to assign her to a staff position and allow her to work at home for up to six months. If she is found medically qualified, she can return to a full-time controller's job. Otherwise, the agency agreed to help her apply for a disability retirement or worker's compensation.

The FAA said yesterday it was "pleased to put this dispute behind us so that we may move forward to make the agency a diverse workplace where people of various cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds feel welcome and can work in harmony."

Louise Eberhard, a Baltimore consultant who operated the FAA training sessions, has explained that the idea of the gantlets was "to turn the tables (on men) for one brief minute." Women and racial minorities "experience this kind of harassment every day."

But an internal analysis of the FAA training warned last year that "too much confrontation can result in pushing trainees beyond their emotional limits, resulting in adverse psychological effects, or entrenchment in the attitudes and behavior the training was meant to change."

"It was probably well intended," said Mike McNally, a controllers union official, "but you don't teach people about sexual harassment by sexually harassing them."