County Reviews Harassment Training Maintenance Employees Complain Sexual Harassment Class Is Too Graphic

The sexual harassment training required for Spokane County employees is under investigation for containing too much sex.

Twenty employees in the vehicle maintenance shop, the majority of them men, recently complained in a letter to county managers about the graphic nature of the class videotape and some of the instructor’s techniques.

The letter states the instructor, Chris Johnson of the county’s human resources department, patted a male worker’s buttocks during a demonstration in early March and said, “You have a cute little butt.”

Whether Johnson touched the employee is one of the main items being investigated by Human Resources Director Ben Duncan.

Duncan has sat through Johnson’s two-hour class before and said she makes the “cute little butt” comment but doesn’t touch anyone. He would not allow Johnson to respond to that allegation, pending his investigation.

Johnson said she’s dumbfounded by the criticism but will re-evaluate her teaching methods.

In four years, she’s had complaints from only two anonymous workers but rave reviews from most of the 1,500 participants. At the conclusion of the class, participants are asked to rate it on a 5-point scale, with 5 being excellent. The average has been 4.2 to 4.3.

“This is one of the passions of my life, teaching this class,” said Johnson, who draws on first-hand experience of being harassed. “Fact is always stranger than fiction.”

None of the 20 shop workers who signed the complaining letter would be interviewed. The author of the letter, Joe Lyons, said he wouldn’t have written it had he known the newspaper would obtain a copy.

Duncan said he was interviewing the offended employees Thursday and Friday to see if Johnson’s presentation was too racy. He will release his findings to commissioners this week.

Duncan commended Johnson’s “stage presence” and teaching skills as excellent.

“But we need to be role models,” he said. “If we turn two or three people off, then they shut down and we’ve lost them.”

Johnson agreed and said, “I don’t want the learning to get lost in the shock. But they should be offended. Sexual harassment is offensive. This is something I feel very, very strongly about. It doesn’t belong in the workplace.”

The letter of complaint cites two examples of sexually explicit material on the professionally produced video, but overstates what is actually shown.

An actor playing the role of the only woman in a shop describes an evolving pattern of harassment. It culminates when she finds a picture of a woman’s genitals with an arrow pointing at it and labeled with a smutty term.

The shop employees indicate in their letter that the video showed the actual picture. “This was horrifying to have presented in front of men and women in the same class,” the letter states.

But the half-hour video does not show the picture.

In another dramatization, two men and a woman are talking about their weekend in front of another woman, newly hired. One veteran asks if anyone had sex over the weekend.

According to the workers’ letter, the video asks how many times a person had sex over the weekend.

The video is a popular teaching tool among many Northwest agencies and businesses. In Spokane, it has been bought by The Spokesman-Review, Burlington Northern Railroad, Gonzaga University, Washington Water Power and the U.S. Postal Service.

The complaining county workers said Johnson also made them uncomfortable by relating a real-life scenario:

In 1993, Johnson was set to interview a county employee accused of sexual harassment. Right before their meeting, the man made a raunchy comment about her to a group of co-workers. They told her about it later.

“It’s such a vital example for me,” Johnson said. “It’s the best example I have of group behavior.”

Johnson spends much of her class time on group dynamics. Employees who otherwise would never harass someone might become desensitized in a group setting and cave in to peer pressure, she said.

People who don’t object to a colleague’s behavior may be granting tacit approval, she said.

Johnson also spends much of her teaching time trying to reach older employees, who may have worked in times when harassment was more tolerated.

She also asks class members how they would feel if co-workers made lewd comments about their spouses, siblings or grandparents.

“Just to get that little bulb to come on, you’ve done a lot for prevention,” said Johnson, who in four years has investigated a dozen cases of harassment among county employees, confirming it existed in eight cases.

The county’s sexual harassment class is required of all workers when they are hired and every three years after that.

, DataTimes