This PBS News Hour is worth reading in its entirety.
The U.S. Forest Service is implementing what it’s calling a 30-day action plan to address harassment, sexual misconduct, and retaliation in the agency.
The changes come weeks after a PBS NewsHour investigation into these issues, especially in the agency’s firefighting ranks, along with the departure of Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke amid allegations of his own sexual misconduct.
Interim chief Vicki Christiansen announced the plan on an all-staff call last week, and in an email to staff Wednesday. Recent news reports, she said, had “focused a bright light on a problem the agency has been combating for years” and “made it painfully clear that the policies prohibiting such behaviors are not enough.”
A transcript of the call was given to the PBS NewsHour by two Forest Service employees.
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Additionally, Lago announced there would be an agency-wide workplace survey to look at employee perceptions of sexual and non-sexual harassment. In January, the Forest Service released a survey of harassment in the agency, but it looked only at Region 5, or the state of California, an area whose issues were the focus of a congressional hearing in December 2016. The Forest Service has never done a national survey of the problem, as the National Park Service did after similar issues were reported in its agency in 2016.
Lago also announced the creation of a heat map tool to identify particular problem areas, an employee code of conduct called “This Is Who We Are,” and standardized harassment trainings for employees.”
I will post the transcript on this blog in another post.
A couple of points: I think the survey on sexual and non-sexual harassment is good because plenty of people feel harassed for various reasons and it needs to be explored in depth. I also think the heat map tool would be great at helping to understand patterns and causes. I’m a little surprised at the assumptions that folks are making that these approaches are not enough and won’t work, since they have not yet been tried. One commenter on the News Hour story didn’t think a heat map would be useful.
Retired Forest Service firefighter Jonel Wagoner, who joined the Forest Service in the 1980s and alleged decades of harassment based on her gender, said she was skeptical of the “soundbites and fed-speak” she heard on the call.
“More training, more promises to hold people accountable … None of that has helped to change the culture to date,” Wagoner wrote in an email. She and other longtime employees recounted years of harassment and retaliation in an interview with the NewsHour.
f I were Chief, I would get retired Employee Relations folks in a room and ask them what they think would work. For example, I wonder if centralizing HR contributed to a de-emphasis on working on tough personnel problems on districts and forests. I know when I filed a grievance, being able to go down the hall to those folks (in the RO) made a big difference. I also wonder whether there should be a more formal approach to reach out to retirees and discuss our experiences, and what worked and didn’t. But it’s ultimately up to the people working today to figure this out and make it happen.
Here’s a link to the information on the efforts they were developing last July.
Regardless of what action(s) is/are taken, it has to get better than it currently is. I watched a former high-performing young female who used to work for me get thrashed emotionally by her then-current supervisor. The response by senior leadership was appalling in their timeliness. I have never understood why that was.
Having been around the block on this situation so many times in my career, and even asking other women supervisors “what would you do if…” and they tell me that they would do the same thing that has always been done (and not even recognized that they had been “brainwashed” into thinking about that as the proper way to handle sexual harassment), I am hopeful, but until line officers are held accountable (and removed or reassigned or demoted), there won’t be much happening on this front. I did work for one forest where the Forest Supervisor quickly reassigned a Forest Staff person after he learned that that person had done nothing when a woman of color in the staff officer’s chain of command was harassed. There was no “2nd chance”, no “don’t do that again”, just a swift reassignment. That sent a powerful message.
Obviously, the Forest Service has — and has had — a big problem with sexual harassment. But that problem is embedded in a culture of patriarchy, of hierarchy, of near-messianic devotion to simple goals (get the cut out, get the fires out, …), and more. The organizational model was derived from European (Prussian) bureaucratic traditions, and still remains highly resistant to change. What to do? I don’t know. According to Biblical writ Moses had to wait 40 years in the wilderness for the people to be ready to embrace the responsibility of freedom, self-governance, etc. (At least as some tell the story.) Some of us have been waiting more than half that long in this battle, particularly when we broaden the “#MeToo,” “#TimesUp,” movement to “#WeToo”.
I did a bit of searching, (combating gender bias male bureaucracy patriarchy) and found this:
Renowned Therapist Explains The Crushing Effects Of Patriarchy On Men And Women Today, Kathy Caprino, Forbes, 01/25/2018.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2018/01/25/renowned-therapist-explains-the-crushing-effects-of-patriarchy-on-men-and-women-today/#7fbbd7332161
Some snips:
What seems true in terms of couples relationships, seem equally true in broader organizational framing. But all of it isn’t going to be easy, or quick. There was a time when I was hopeful for a smoother transition. Remember Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot’s book The End of Bureaucracy: And the rise of the intelligent organization?
That came during a moment of hope. How many in the Forest Service read it? How many in leadership positions used it to help guide change? How many in so-called leadership positions ever did much beyond proclaim the virtues of extant bureaucratic order?
So is the agency going to set up yet-another training program, another survey, or another listening session, and pretend that it will make a difference? Likely. We have seen it so many times before.
My advice is, and has been for a very time, that agency leaders sit down with the best and brightest minds not only in organizational development and transformation, management, and leadership, but also in cultural transformation (cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology, …) to work up a way forward, keeping in mind the path the Pinchots suggested back in 1994:
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED390181
Moses never saw his promised land, and neither will I most likely. I could never even get the Forest Service to abandon its clingy allegiance to the FS Manual and Handbook directives, let alone to embrace the journey required of learning organizations. Both hierarchy and patriarchy will likely outlive me. But we must keep trying. So more power to #MeToo #WeToo #TimesUp …
I’m not sure “intimacy” and “happiness” translates well into employment, where “The old rules were built for stability, for production and consumption” and still are. Our economic system (and government agency promotions) rewards women for “confident and kick ass,” but the economic rewards for men to be “big-hearted and vulnerable and sensitive” (and not domineering) are not as obvious. Maybe success will be where we have an equal number of harassment claims against women as against men?
Agree. I stretched the parallel too far. I will take, in the short term “Maybe success will be where we have an equal number of harassment claims against women as against men?” In the longer term we need to build or reframe organizations after the Pinchots’ advice.
WHAT WE DO NOT NEED, is to waste more tax payers money on a survey. I been a Forest Service employee for over 32 years and this stuff is worse now than in the 80’s and early 90’s. Lago is and was a problem in her shop, just watch the hearing of December 1, 2016. She did not even know the regulations to fire employees but let offenders retire with full benefits. What happened to her, PROMOTION! This is what’s wrong with the culture, we promote the problems and harasses or fire the victim. First correct and get rid of the upper management , hold them accountable and rebuild. Have a monitor system/council of a range of folks, not just management cronies, that what we are going to get…Look at the CRIT-CRAT of Clintons administration. Had lots of good stuff in it. Sound funny that something good came out of that administration on sexual harassment.
ATBM- I remember the CRITS and CRATS but was fortunate not to be involved with harassment, neither as an employee nor a supervisor. Could you tell us what about them in your opinion made them so successful? If you need more space than a comment you can submit it to me in an email as a guest post. You do not have to give your name. Thanks!