Gender and racial discrimination at a Pharma giant

We’ll need government financed incentives to push pharmaceutical companies into developing new antibiotics. Just when we need Pharma to clean up its act and improve its image with the public, we have more unflattering news about the industry.

5,600 women have filed a class action suit against the multinational drug firm Novartis, claiming $200 million in damages. The women claim that Novartis discouraged pregnancies and ignored their complaints of sexual harassment.

Plaintiffs plan to tell the jury that they were denied promotions if they became pregnant or if they took their full maternity leave. One of the plaintiffs was “urged to have an abortion.” Another was asked to give the company “two child-free years.”

Of the 20 largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the world, Novartis ranked first in revenues in 2008. It manufacturers the prescription drug Ritalin and produces many well known over the counter remedies, such as Ex-Lax, Bufferin, Excedrin, No-doz, and Gas-X.

A good manager who was “terrible with women”

According to the plaintiffs’ counsel, Katherine Kimpel:

[T]he company fostered a culture that “ignores and undermines legitimate concerns and complaints,” including failing to discipline a manager who used derogatory names for women, asked female sales representatives to sit in his lap, and showed them pornographic images.

The company is not denying the actions of its employee (who also liked to tell dirty jokes).

The manager was the “poster boy for bad behavior and he got fired,” [Novartis’ defense attorney Richard] Schnadig said, urging jurors to keep in mind that “some bad experiences” did not represent the company, which like every company “has a few jerks.”

I suspect the “few jerks” argument will not make for a strong defense.

The company gives itself credit for firing the manager even though he was a good employee:

“He wasn’t even that bad a manager,” said Schnadig. … “He was just terrible with women.”

CBS’ business site, BNET, comments:

One would have thought that not being terrible with women ought to be a management pre-qualification, given that here on planet Earth women are quite common.

Perhaps it’s because the gentleman in question, Brian Aiello, was such a good manager that it took Novartis two years to take action after they learned of the employee’s behavior.

This was a really bad apple

Compared to discussion of the case in the New York Law Journal, reporting by The New York Post was (not surprisingly) a bit more graphic:

[Plaintiffs’ lawyer Kimpel] said jurors would hear disgusting accounts of sexual harassment, including a male manager who showed pornography to his female subordinates, openly referred to women as “bitches and c—s” and said wives “were only good for washing, ironing and f—–g.”

It’s also alleged that Aiello engaged in racial discrimination:

Additionally, District Manager Aiello often bragged about terminating all of the minority employees on his sales team during his two years as the Area Sales Manager. Moreover, he openly discussed the reasons why he fired them, for example, commenting on their stupidity. After firing one African American female employee, District Manager Aiello told other sales representatives that the African American female employee was disgusting and black and that “her car was full of chicken bones.”
District Manager Aiello also complained about receiving applications from “diversity” candidates and often refused to grant them interviews.

The trial, which began Thursday in New York, is a “closely watched case” according to the Law Journal. It is believed to be the largest class-action suit of its kind in the U.S., second only to a pending discrimination suit against Walmart. Novartis has been using legal delaying tactics since 2004 to prevent the case from coming before a jury.
The judge, by the way, is a woman.

Related posts:
Why are there no new antibiotics?
Selling drugs like chewing gum
Direct-to-consumer: The ads we love to hate
How the pharmas make us sick
Big Pharma tells Santa: All I want for Christmas
Campaign contributions and the cost of pharmaceuticals
Are women doctors safer?