What happens when the very institution meant to protect your employee rights becomes a breeding ground for discrimination and harassment? In this eye-opening episode of the Employee Survival Guide®, host Mark Carey sits down with investigative journalist Susan Antillo, who pulls back the curtain on the disturbing culture at Globe Life Insurance. Through her recent exposé, Antillo reveals the harrowing story of Renee Zinsky, a victim of severe sexual harassment from her boss, highlighting the urgent need for employee rights advocacy in the face of employment discrimination.
As Antillo delves into the implications of forced arbitration laws, listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by victims of workplace harassment and discrimination. This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the complex landscape of employment law, as it emphasizes the importance of knowing your rights as an employee. With the growing prevalence of hostile work environments and the alarming rise of retaliation claims, it’s crucial to empower yourself with knowledge and resources.
Antillo sheds light on the power dynamics that perpetuate such behavior, particularly in industries where employees are often misclassified as independent contractors. This misclassification not only complicates severance negotiation but also strips employees of vital protections under employment law. The conversation underscores the pressing need for greater awareness and advocacy for employee rights, especially in the wake of new legislation addressing sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace.
Join Mark and Susan as they reflect on the broader implications of these issues for employees navigating their careers. They discuss the changing landscape of workplace dynamics and the critical importance of employee empowerment in combating discrimination—be it based on gender, race, age, or disability. This episode is not just about survival; it’s about thriving in a world where workplace challenges are an unfortunate reality.
Whether you’re dealing with work disputes, understanding employment contracts, or seeking guidance on severance packages, this episode of the Employee Survival Guide® offers invaluable insights and insider tips for employees. Tune in to learn how to advocate for yourself and ensure that your rights are not just acknowledged but actively protected. Don’t let workplace discrimination define your career; empower yourself with the tools and knowledge to survive and thrive!
Link to Blog article Mark wrote about this story and internal link to the Insider story written by Susan Antilla. CLICK HERE.
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For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.
Transcript:
Speaker #0 Hey, it’s Mark here and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide where I tell you as always what your employer does definitely not want you to know about and a lot more. Okay, welcome back and it’s Mark again and today we have a guest with us. It’s Susan Antillo and she’s an award-winning investigative journalist. who has written about employment discrimination and investor protection issues for the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Nation, and other global news outlets. She is an author of the hashtag MeToo book about sexual harassment on Wall Street, Tales from the Boom Boom Rim, the landmark legal battles that exposed Wall Street’s shocking culture of sexual harassment. The Sunday Times of London called it an explosive new book that has scandalized Manhattan’s financial district. Susan, welcome to the podcast. Speaker #1 Hi, Mark. Speaker #0 Thank you for having me. You recently wrote a story that captured my attention and still does. The story came out in the publication of Insider on February 28th, 2023. And it was titled as The Inside Tawdry Drug-Fueled Violent World of America’s Top Life Insurance Salesman Regarding Globe Life Insurance. And I wanted to talk to you a bit about your investigation experience how the story arose and what you encountered as you went through the process. So maybe you can share with us, how did the story come to you? Speaker #1 Sure. Well, I think it was last March that President Biden signed a bill, this is a long one, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. And this was basically a new law that allows even people who have signed mandatory arbitration agreements, if they’re filing a lawsuit about sexual assault or sexual harassment in the workplace, they can remain in court even if they’ve signed an arbitration agreement. So because I write about this stuff on really a regular basis, at least every couple of days, I would just go on to PACER to look at federal court documents. Right. And I would put in the search term of this law. And lo and behold, in April of last year, I came across this Zinsky versus Russon and AIL case. Renee Zinsky is the woman who filed it. And I read the complaint. And I have to tell you, I’ve been writing about this stuff since the mid-1990s. And my jaw dropped. I had never heard anything like this. This was a woman who… said that her boss would take her out in his car and, you know, force her to watch him masturbate. And it gets worse from there. And I said, Whoa, you know what’s going on here? So I called her lawyer and asked her to set up a time that I could speak to Renee Zinsky. And it sort of unfolded from there. You know, Zinsky story itself is harrowing. as I went along, I thought, well, let me gather names of male agents as I was doing the research. And when I do stories like this right away, I put their names into a database so that I can see what their records look like. And I started, you know, these names started popping up with terroristic threats and felonious assaults and- Nice group of people. on a podcast where he was talking about the fact that he got caught with a bunch of drugs when he was a kid and they put him into juvenile detention. So, you know, I’m looking at these people saying, how do you get a bunch of people like this in a regulated industry? And so there were a lot of roads I went down as a result of that. But I discovered along the way, along the way that insurance regulation was kind of a joke. And it went on and on from there. Speaker #0 You and I, when you first shared the story with me, we talked a bit about the fact that the folks in Simon Arias’s office in Pennsylvania were all independent contractors. And you wrote in your article the fact that these individuals were above the law because they were independent contractors. And I actually had to confront that and say that, in fact, you know, there are cases that demonstrate that the independent contractors can be held liable. It’s called an economic realities test, where in essence is the employer really is controlling the duration of time and every aspect of the person’s work. And they really can’t work for any other party but them. And that’s really kind of a side point. And I’m sure it’s being hashed out in the arbitration or the federal court proceeding. But the fascinating part of the story was the level of just degradation of just people’s rights um you just mentioned it uh you know getting in the car for the one-on-ones that renee had to get uh was uh she just her whole work environment was just uh just you know mr i think it was the actor here is mr russon uh that’s how his name is pronounced um he just had a just no um filter he just he just did and said what he wanted and it was just at his pleasure, so to speak. And it was just so alarming the things that were coming out of his mouth and obviously through your reporting of the article. It was just every single reference possible to a woman that could be negative, pejorative was used. Sluts and bitches and whores and sexual comments that were made. It’s just remarkable that the company never took any action to protect the employees there. Speaker #1 Well, Mark, I know that you know in your work that when you’re a rainmaker, you can get away with a lot. Speaker #0 Yeah. Speaker #1 Even putting aside the fact that they were 1099 contract workers, even when somebody is a full-time employee, I wrote so much about sexual harassment in the brokerage industry. And if a guy was a rainmaker, it was really hard to battle that person. The company would put up as much legal defense as they needed to, hire as many firms as they needed to, threaten to ruin the woman’s reputation and to let other firms know that they shouldn’t hire her. And this guy, Russen was a rainmaker. He was very successful. He wrote a lot of business and it really was not in Arius Agency’s interest nor in the interest of American Income Life which was supplying them with the products that they sold. You know, they loved this guy. Speaker #0 Right, right. Speaker #1 He was making lots of money. Speaker #0 Yeah, I highlighted certain parts of your article. I apologize. But in reference to Mr. Arias, there was, I guess, a convention of the Globe folks in 2020. And CEO Larry Hutchinson was quoted as saying about Arias, you’ve been an inspiration to me and everybody in the home office. That’s correct. I thought that was just, well, funny, but also just, wait a minute. That’s just insane. Speaker #1 Yeah. And Mark, look, they loved Simon Arias. He was the AIL, has a lot of agencies. Simon Arias’ agency is one of them, but it is the second biggest producer for American income life. And, and the biggest producer is, is an agency that has, I think almost all of California and part of Canada. So, you know, by comparison, it’s, Of course, they would have more. So Simon Arias is a very important contributor to the bottom line. And they have given him Globe Life, the parent company, several times. They’ve given Simon Arias their Legacy Award, which is the highest honor that they give. Speaker #0 Right. Speaker #1 So the question arises, so okay, did these parent companies know what was going on? Speaker #0 Of course they did. Speaker #1 Yeah. I mean, how do you… Speaker #0 I highlighted, there was a, you pulled some commentary from the company. It was very, let’s see here. It’s a Globe executive vice president, Jennifer Hayworth said, the company AIL takes seriously any allegation brought to its attention concerning sexual harassment, inappropriate conduct, or unethical business practices and makes clear that it does not tolerate such behavior agents or others are subject to contract termination if they engage in the conduct. you know, I’m used to hearing those statements from my end. It’s a level of denial that’s common. But in the face of what was happening and the complaints that remain internally, they just propagated this behavior because of the money. Speaker #1 Right. Speaker #0 They didn’t care. Speaker #1 And I mean, certainly, I mean, you could guess this, but I’ll just say it that when I am doing a story like this, I send very detailed questions to the defendants. I want to give them every opportunity to comment. If I have something wrong, I want them to say, “Are you crazy? That didn’t happen,” and explain why. I want to hear that. Instead, I got the boilerplate statement that you just read. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they knew nothing about it until I called it to their attention. But they didn’t take the opportunity to say that any of it was wrong. So, you know, and by the way, after I wrote the story and I spoke to many people, obviously before the story, after the story, more people came out of the woodwork to talk to me. And in one case, a woman described incidents very much like what happened to Renee, but it was with another man. at Arias agencies where she said, I mean, this is hard to hear. But basically, this woman told me that her boss would take her out in his car and pull over and shove her, take the back of her head and shove it into his crotch. And that’s what Renee Zinsky said happened to her. In this case, the woman said that they were out on client calls. They spent a lot of time in their cars these agents because they have to go visit people at their homes. Speaker #0 But they’re still in the scope of their employment. They’re still working. Speaker #1 Absolutely, absolutely. They are. But that’s the reason that a woman can end up in a car alone with some of these guys, because they are on business. And this particular guy was just he would just pull over in the middle of a trip and say, I’m not going to take you home unless you service me, Speaker #0 which is what we call quid pro quo sexual harassment and legal parlance. Similar to this, and it’s also reported in your story that there is a use of a device, the practice that I call it called forced arbitration. They make all employees sign including Renee and got Renee into a tangle in federal court and pushed part of her case out to arbitration and part of it was remaining. But the aspect of forced arbitration here, it was used as… And I want everybody to understand this, that it’s used as a cover to protect in the confidentiality of, in this case, extremely seriously bad acts of management and coworkers across the scale from sex to drugs to whatever else they were doing there. So forced arbitration is a device that management attorneys, defense attorneys claim helps facilitate in a very cheap and expensive way the resolution of legal disputes, which is a bunch of malarkey because it’s There’s a federal statute called the American Arbitration Act, and it’s been around for a long, long time. But as we now know, and recently President Biden just passed a law to, as you recorded earlier, is that he banned forced arbitration in sexual harassment assault cases. So part of this case… I actually went to the docket like you did, and I actually went into the docket in Pittsburgh and realize that the attorney did exactly what I would normally do in these cases. I always find arbitration provisions in these cases, and I try to push a federal lawsuit into court and basically get compelled out from there. But why do I do that? Because I want people to know what happened. That’s exactly what Renee’s attorney did. Speaker #1 Yes, that’s so smart. I mean, I don’t know why more attorneys don’t do that because you can’t… You can’t stop somebody, even if the lawyer says, oh, I made a mistake. I mean, you can’t stop somebody from filing something. And yes, it’s interesting. Because of that, when I look at arbitration results against stock brokers, it’s different in the brokerage industry. So the brokerage industry self-regulatory organization runs an arbitration program, and they actually do give you the results of those arbitrations there. but they don’t give you much detail. And very often, or often enough that it’s interesting, I’ll find that I get those results against stockbrokers with the limited explanation and then I go onto the federal website pacer.gov and lo and behold, I find out that they did try to sue and they got forced into arbitration. So yes, reporters do that for exactly the reason. You’re doing something very effective because it does get it in the public record. Speaker #0 Yeah. And And it’s just a required aspect of what I do. And I’m glad you look and spread the word through your medium, because that’s how people learn. Otherwise, they’re not going to know about this. Speaker #1 Right, right. Speaker #0 You know, back to the, you know, I just want to, I don’t want to gloss over what Renee and her coworkers experienced there. I mean, one of the allegations that was raised was Russen was sending Snapchat messages to her. And one of them, it was a picture of him naked. And did you talk to Renee about that? And the other one she received as well? Speaker #1 I did. I did. And I met Renee. I went down to Pittsburgh to meet her and to visit the Arius agency and talk to other people who had worked there. And now I’ve totally lost my train of thought. I’m sorry, Mark. Where did we start here? Speaker #0 Russian had sent a Snapchat. Speaker #1 She wasn’t working. She hadn’t been working there that long. And she was home one day on the weekend and she saw that she got a Snapchat message from him and she called it up on her phone and said, It was a picture of him naked. We ran the picture with him covered up. And she kind of, she just, she was sort of in shock as she described it to me. And it’s kind of interesting what happened after that. She took a screenshot of it. And because it was apparently I’m not on Snapchat, so I don’t know, but apparently these messages don’t last very long. Speaker #0 That’s my kid say. Speaker #1 Yeah. So. Um, so she took a screenshot of it and apparently there is a way for the person who sends you something to know that you took a screenshot. And, um, and he called her and laced into her. Why did you do that? And get rid of that. And the next day when she came into work, um, Renee told me that he took her phone and screamed at her and he went through to make sure that that didn’t exist anymore. But she had, um, But she had made another copy of it somehow. I don’t know how, so that’s why she still had it. But the reason I tell you this story is that he was very aware of not leaving these footprints. He was aware of not leaving evidence, although I’m saying that and yet I know a lot of other ways that he did leave evidence, but he knew that that one would be really bad for somebody else to see. And so he got really angry about it. Speaker #0 Let me comment on that because when I read the story, I did some investigation earlier that he had gone out on a podcast and just lamented her and just led. He just basically laid it all out there. Like some attorney would have told him to shut up, but he just refused to do it. And he was just like an idiot. I mean, Speaker #1 yeah, it’s, it’s really, I don’t even, I don’t even have an analysis of that. It’s kind of so weird actually to when you’ve been sued, um, as he has been for the things that he’s been sued for. The fact that he did that, that he would, I can’t remember exactly what he said. He said that, oh, he did say something to the effect in one podcast of why would she go out in my car with me eight times? Because she had told me that he had done this to her at least eight times. Speaker #0 Right. Remember that. Speaker #1 And well, the answer is that Her job depended on him liking her. Speaker #0 Right. Speaker #1 You know, there certainly are a lot of women in the workplace who put up with an amazing number of crazy things and really hurtful and harmful things. And they do it because they don’t want to lose their jobs. Speaker #0 And she was making $20,000 before and is probably making a good deal of money now working for Globe. Speaker #1 Right. Yeah. Her last job, she was a delivery person for a pizza parlor. Speaker #0 Right. Right. Speaker #1 Yes, you’re right. She made $20,000 a year. And then at her job at Arias Agencies, she made $109,000, I think it was. I can’t remember exactly how much, but she was making substantially more money. She was a very good salesperson. Speaker #0 Right. Did she… I’m sure I read this, but I’m sure she complained about the behavior she was experiencing, the sexual harassment she was experiencing, and the company didn’t do anything about it. Speaker #1 Well, no, not… She talked to people about it. She talked to some people who sat near her in the agency who could see something was going on. But Renee, she didn’t want to lose her job. And Russen made it very clear, apparently during meetings, Renee told me that he would regularly say, go ahead and try to sue me. You’ll never have the money I have. You’ll never… Don’t even bother. Speaker #0 Right. Speaker #1 And you’ll end up regretting it. Speaker #0 He was trying to instill intimidation and instill fear into her. Speaker #1 And it was a little, she described it as cult-like at the place that, you know, you had to be totally loyal to Mike, that you never questioned anything about what was going on. And if you did anything that even a little tiny slight, you never criticized anything. If you did anything that was critical or questionable, you were seen as disloyal. And she said that, you know, you’d have your leads taken. You need your leads as a salesperson. Right. get a certain number of leads. And she said one time she complained about something and she went back into the system and a whole bunch of leads that were in her queue were all gone. Speaker #0 Yeah, I read that. I want to kind of talk about a very serious issue that came up as well. Zinsky said, I guess through the federal complaint that you reported on, that the company had used a date rate drug on her. Do you remember this incident? No. Speaker #1 There were actually a couple. Yeah. In one case, there was, I guess, I guess Bresson had taken some of the people out. They did a lot of drinking at this place. Drinking in the afternoon. Speaker #0 That’s an understatement. Speaker #1 And so Bresson took some of his reports to a local bar and, and As Renee tells the story, she basically blacked out and like she doesn’t even know what happened. She found a way to get herself back from the bar to the office. And one of her colleagues found her passed out on the bathroom floor. You know, she’d been there for hours and hours. There was another instance where… And she… She told me in one of these cases, she got a text or a phone call or something from him saying, hey, you know, wasn’t that fun? Or something like that. Like, in one case, he said, yeah, you know, I put some GHB into your drink, which is the date rape drug. In another instance, they were having one of these weekend team building things at a hotel in Cranberry, Pennsylvania. And again, they were at the bar and she went back up to somebody’s room because she, somebody had borrowed her hairspray. So she went back to get it. And the next thing she knows, she’s waking up on a bed with three people having sex next to her, couldn’t feel her legs, didn’t know what was going on. Um, so yeah. And, and she said that these drugs were openly used. Um, so I mean, I’m saying this too, it’s so funny, you know, This is just so incredible. Speaker #0 It is incredible. That’s why I wanted to make sure that we didn’t pass by discussing the date right drug aspect of this, and then she still continued to work while this was taking place. I mean, that’s a level of fear and intimidation I have never seen in any case, and it just was shocking. I’ll note that when I looked at the docket and the way the case bifurcated out because of arbitration, the sexual assault claims remained in federal court and that’s what’s pending. Those are serious. I mean, forget the issues of employment discrimination. It’s a sexual assault aspect of federal court. I mean, these guys, I mean, it’s a civil prosecution. It’s alarming that the criminal prosecution hasn’t taken place. Maybe they’re waiting. I don’t know. But it’s just jaw dropping. I’m sorry. end the podcast with you and I just discussing, you know, you have your experience reporting on Wall Street and writing a book about things you’ve seen. And I have my experience of litigating cases for a long time. Maybe we can just, you know, share just, you know, it doesn’t have to be, I mean, Renee didn’t have to go through what she went through. There are laws and ways to protect individuals. You know, the easiest thing of self-help is to just basically quit. But that’s not always a choice for people. But what are your thoughts of after just doing the story? And, you know, right now in June of 2023, in the state of affairs for employees, how do you feel about, you know, how people should react to this story, advocate for themselves? I mean, what’s your thoughts? Speaker #1 Well, you know, you had said to me when we talked a few weeks ago, people have to know their rights and that’s Absolutely, they do need to understand their rights. And I do think more people do. In the case of this particular company, they recruit kids out of high school. They don’t know anything, you know? And I don’t mean that as a derogatory statement. They’re just young. They’ve never worked before or they’ve worked in a pizza parlor, you know? So they just don’t know and they’re being indoctrinated. So they think that this is a normal workplace, believe it or not. Speaker #0 And you used the word cult before too. Speaker #1 Yes. I thought it was very cult-like. And when I interview people, it’s one of the first things they say. I don’t prompt them. It was very cult-like. So, I mean, knowing your rights is a big deal. I’m amazed that a huge problem here is people don’t read documents. And, you know, it’s, I just beg people when you are getting a job, read the stuff that they want you to sign. And because they almost, we all know almost all companies have mandatory arbitration. But if you’re going to be able to do something about the clauses in your contract, the only shot you’ve got is when they’re hiring you. When you’re still having a love affair, when they’re dying to get you, right? If you can’t negotiate that stuff at that moment, forget it because you’re never going to get that chance again. Now I’m not saying that companies will necessarily cave in but I think that if you get a really abrupt no to everything that tells you about the company too, right? So I just, you know… I just can’t believe that people don’t read that stuff. And I really like, you’ve got to read that stuff. Renee made that mistake twice by the way, because she had a mandatory arbitration agreement when she got there. But then interestingly, when she finally in 2021, I think it was, went and complained to the agency owner about this guy, he said– and she showed him the Snapchat messages. She showed him stuff. He said, okay, so I’ll take you out from under him and you can report to me. And she said, okay. And he said, but meanwhile, here, you’ve got to sign a new employment agreement. And lo and behold, the new employment agreement, of course, has a mandatory arbitration clause. That’s what the company used to say that she couldn’t use the new law because it was a post-employment clause. Speaker #0 I remember reading that too. Speaker #1 Yeah. Speaker #0 That was in the legal argument, I believe, in the court. Speaker #1 Yeah. And two other things that I would say, employees need to understand that human resources is not on their side. Human resources works for management. They don’t work for you. They’re protecting management. And if you’re at the point where something really bad is happening and you’re engaged with HR, I mean, Mark, God bless you. I hope you make all the money in the world. Thank you. But I tell people, you’ve got to have a lawyer. You cannot stand up against these people. They have all the resources. If you go in there basically legally naked, I think that you’re not going to have a good thing happen. The other little thing I’d like to just mention is when you’re in any workplace, even without these problems, when… When a supervisor says, okay, we’re going to do X, Y, Z with regard to your career. Like send an affirming email to that person saying, you know, Joe, it’s great to talk to you. I’m so excited that you’re going to offer me X, Y, and Z. And, you know, please let me know if there’s anything else I should know about the job because then you’ve, you know, if Joe doesn’t get back to you and say, I didn’t say that to you. Speaker #0 then you’ve kind of affirmed that that conversation has gone on. I think those are important things for people to know at work. Speaker #1 So you’re saying the lawyer’s trick of documenting everything via email, which I do regularly. I even do it to other lawyers as well. It works very effectively, especially lawyers who behave in an uncivil manner. I had one recently apologize to me because I called them out on it. Let me remark about the aspect of people not reading employees don’t have a familiarity with these documents and also economic circumstances dictate that they have to just sign whatever. And I label these contracts as what’s called a contract of adhesion or a take it or leave it deal. And companies literally tell people take it or leave it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it legal in our ways to challenge it. Yes, you should negotiate it every contract you get. And you really have to understand your leverage, but we’re not there yet in terms of our, development of the relationship between employees, employers yet. And I mean because I’m being optimistic, employers still hold a heavy hand against employees and dictate terms all the time non-competes alike. We are starting to see changes in that in the form of the Federal Trade Commission proposing a rule against non-competes for everybody. That rule has not come into effect yet. We have this slice of the arbitration policy being limited in cases of sexual harassment, as you described. So we really are at a really remarkable stage in American history of working and that’s I want people to understand that it’s not something’s really afoot here, something’s happening. And I want people to understand. And I do talk about extensively in the podcast or blog articles I’m writing, because I’m seeing it. And, and I don’t care what I have this weird philosophy, I don’t care what I do in courts. I care what I do publicly. Because I’m going to get that message out further through this messaging medium or otherwise. Court cases are slow. And people don’t have to understand, federal court, one third of their docket is employment cases and judges don’t like employment cases. One year, I went to a judge’s luncheon and the chief clerk said only five cases had gone to trial that year in two, one, three laws, something like that. Hundreds of cases. So there are different ways to… to deal with the employer. And I, I, I’ve gotten really creative in this and I want to say that people, you don’t, I, yes, I appreciate, um, you know, having people call an employment lawyer to help them. That’s true. And use them as a resource to what, whatever fits your goal. But I’ve actually encountered a recent circumstance where a client, former client of mine, a friend of mine, he had, um, he’d used me in the past and we got a settlement and then he, um, he went and He took the affidavit we had drafted and he redrafted it for the next employment he had. And he was able to broker his own severance of 10 X of what they offered him using the affidavit that I used. If you had gone into Zinsky’s case at the EOC level, there’s probably a, an EOC affidavit at the court case level. It’s the judge or the lawyer writing the fact pattern. But I really can express that people should draft an affidavit with the facts, not conclusions, but say exactly what happened. Like if you had to read Rene’s story, you would read all the quotes, all the soundbites reported in your article in its chronological order. These things are powerful devices. I have used them, no joke, I’m not misrepresenting things, to deal with Fortune 100, 500 companies, billionaires. They all have the same impact when you use them, if your facts are there. And it’s Yes, the truth will set you free to a severance situation if you have the guts to do it and use an attorney to some extent that suits your goals. But by no means ever litigate because I don’t want people engaging in litigation if there’s a different result that is similar results but not using litigation. So I really try to get that out there. I know it’s fear-based in terms of employer, you know, older and they have more money than I do, but… In reality, and I don’t know if you have an opinion about this, I see the employers are actually fearful of employees. I mean, the whole DEI fiasco is just exactly a representation of that. They don’t know what to do. And they just shoot it in the sky and hope it works. But now they’re clawing it all back. I’ve had several cases of DEI executives who themselves are targeted because now the companies are done with the movement. They’re done with all this, and it’s just a marketing scheme. So… We’re really at a, you know, when I see the train parking lot not full, I know it’s happening in New York City. The people are not going back and it’s just only one slice of America, but The current poll of I think Gallup or somebody keeps track of it. I mean, we’re still not going back to work. People are standing their ground and saying, I don’t like this. And I always think of the old commercial of Mr. Jones and the sexual harassment commercial when you were, when I was younger, she would, some executive would say to Ms. Jones, you know, why don’t you do this for me? And that for me, like the, like the fellow, Mr. Russon, she would say, no, Mr. Jones, that’s sexual harassment. I mean, We are really at the advent of something huge, and people need to understand that they can say something and make change. So what are your feelings about that? Do you think you’re there yet? Speaker #0 Well, I think that you’re right, that a lot of positive things are happening. You know, the Me Too, the whole Me Too movement, and, you know, there just is more awareness of what’s going on and that you don’t have to put up with certain things. I totally think you’re right. We also are living at a time, though, where employers still can’t get all the people that they want to hire. Employees still are holding the cards. And I think that ultimately, a lot of these things end up being economic. Right now, for the first time, I can’t remember how long employees are holding the cards, but that’s not going to be forever. Nothing’s forever. And so To the extent that this is happening now, I think it’s great to take it and run with it and to get as many improvements in employee rights and improvements in employee knowledge as we can get. But I would say that I wouldn’t… Like, enjoy it while we’ve got it. But if the tables turn economically, I’m not sure how much of that will remain. Speaker #1 I, you know, I… Part of me agrees with you and part of me wants to be a pessimist or I’m saying in case an awesome optimist about, I think what’s really happening is that the employees are going to get a leg up on the process and employers are not going to be able to dictate in their so-called one University of Michigan professor coined it as a private government. And I found that just it’s accurate because there are no rules to govern these companies. employers over employees. There are statutes, of course, but nothing internally and they do whatever they want to. I think we’re part of the intuition. My intuition says that we’re really shifting to a point of that. People are, let me put it this way. Employers are more respectful to employees because you know what? They need to create that trust level with them because right now there’s such a level of distrust. That’s what quiet quitting and loud quitting means. There’s such, when we read these stories about, um, employee engagement, it’s so low. It’s just ridiculous. Well, now I think the number crunchers and the MBA people are thinking, well, we need to really entice them. We can’t do it with bonuses and money because they don’t care. Especially the younger population doesn’t care. They care about, you know, is it a purposeful job? And is it a meaningful life? I mean, we’re going to see change. It’s like, it’s beautiful to watch. Speaker #0 Yes, you’re definitely right about that. I mean, I can’t think of any time ever when anybody cared whether, you know, whether I was like comfortable and happy at my job, it’s just work. We’re going to pay you, you know, that was it. Right. Speaker #1 I agree. So that’s what leads me. I mean, I read extensively every day. I’m sure you do as well. What you do, it’s just, I want to stay on top and I want to see, but I am optimistic that things are changing and it really kind of motivates me to keep doing what we’re doing today on the podcast episode and writing about just, you can’t help if you’re a, I am kind of a, I love history, political science. And so I, I just being in the moment of something, I mean, much as nine 11, we were all in that moment. We’re in the moment of the pandemic, but we’re in the moment of something and people need to realize what’s happening. So that’s what, you know, when I saw your story and I just, it just moved me in terms of just how egregious it was. And then this one of the, I wanted us to put it out there in a way that here is the worst case scenario you could ever face. And that’s what Renee went through. And God bless her. I hope she wins a lot of money for them, in her family, but just a remarkable story. Susan, I want to appreciate you coming on the show with and talking about your story, and hopefully we have more of these episodes with you. It’s been a pleasure, as always, to talk to you. Speaker #0 Oh, my pleasure too. It was great. It was great. Thanks, Mark. Speaker #1 All right. All right. Thank you very much. Speaker #0 Thank you. Speaker #1 Hey, it’s Mark, and thank you for listening to this episode of The Employee’s Fiber Guide. If you’d like to be interviewed for our podcast and share your story about what you’re going through at work and do so anonymously, please send me an email at mcaryy at capclaw.com. And also, if you like this podcast episode and others like it, please leave us a review. It really does help others find this podcast. So leave a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you very much. And I’m glad to be a service to you.