WOJ HELPS CLOSE THE DOOR ON
“THE BOOM BOOM ROOM”
By Lillian McCormick

This is the story of three women who worked at Smith Barney/Shearson in Garden City who, early on, came to the Women on the Job Task Force with a hair-raising account of sexual harassment and sex discrimination. They are the heroes of a new book by journalist, Susan Antilla, called, "Tales from the Boom Boom Room (Women vs. Wall Street)." The Boom Boom Room was the party room in the Garden City office where lap dancing and sex antics prevailed. Author Susan Antilla first exposed the scandalous extent of physical and verbal harassment, intimidation, and hiring and promotion discrimination in the brokerage industry as a reporter for the New York Times and Bloomberg News. Her book details the class action sex discrimination lawsuit against Smith Barney from its initiation in 1996 to its woeful conclusion, including the firestorm it set off in the brokerage industry.

Our WOJ Task Force did play a behind-the-scene role in this story of workplace injustice. When the three women came to us asking for help and direction, noted briefly in the book, it was Task Force members who informed them that their complaint, initially filed with the New York State Division of Human Rights, could take too many years to process. Lillian McCormick advised that the women would have greater control and stand to gain a stronger remedy by hiring an attorney and starting a civil lawsuit. Their case grew into a class action and eventually involved almost 2,000 female employees in the brokerage industry where women contended with a sexually hostile work environment in company offices across the country.

Published by Bloomberg Press, the "Boom Boom Room" is a great read and illustrates the determination and perseverance necessary for even strong, well-educated women to initiate a lawsuit against corporate giants in an industry that has been and still is protected by a self-governed and self-administered arbitration process imposed on their employees.

Reviewer Rolf Dobelli from getAbstract says “…it will draw intense interest from everyone affected by this issue: female executives who face glass ceilings and harassment, male executives who must determine their own philosophies toward their female colleagues and human resources professionals who are charged with watching out for them both.”

The book is available on Amazon.com.

Lillian McCormick
Executive Director – Women on the Job
WOJTF@optonline.net

02/03