Tales from the Boom-Boom Room: Women vs. Wall Street

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Tales from the Boom-Boom Room Women vs. Wall Street

By Susan Antilla

Published by Bloomberg, 00

In the early 180s, a growing number of women began to enter the securities industry. Unfortunately, they found a very hostile working environment. One of the biggest securities firms, Smith Barney, had a network of retail brokerage companies through Shearson/American Express. Pam Martens worked in its very successful Garden City, Long Island branch. The branch manager, Nick Cuneo, created a fun atmosphere for the men in the office, who turned the office basement into the party-filled "boom-boom room." Male brokers continually subjected women to verbal harassment and inappropriate touching. Women struggled to be hired, and then found that the men in charge of their careers practiced all sorts of sexual harassment and intimidation, from jokes to displays of sexual intimidation, physical contact, and threats of rape.

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This book discusses how sexual harassment shaped life inside Wall Street firms and how one whistle-blowing woman courageously fought back.

About the author Susan Antilla, a Bloomberg News columnist, once worked at the New York Times where she launched a weekly investing column and an complaint investigation column called "Between Main & Wall." She was the bureau chief of the Money section of USA Today and financial bureau chief for the Baltimore Sun. She was a finalist twice for a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism.

By the time Pam Martens first joined the Garden City office, it had already developed a culture as a party center for hard-driving, competitive brokers. The branch was located in an attractive upscale New York City suburb, but women in the office were treated with no respect by male co-workers who routinely called them vulgar names. The men even discussed their sexual exploits in front of their few female colleagues.

The year 18 brought about the greatest bull market in American history. The Garden City Office, one of the highest output offices in the system, was enjoying the perks that the prosperous market brought. The head of the office, branch manager Nicholas F. Cuneo, reflected the old style approach to sales. He was loud, direct, demanding, and crude in the office, and the men he managed mimicked that tone that he set. He and the other men were not happy when women started working in the office. During one interview with a woman applicant, he had the audacity to tell her that she will not be paid as much as the men in the office.

Cuneo's hard working, hard partying office performed well ranked among the top ten percent of the company's branches in profitability. He encouraged a fun atmosphere, where drinking was common at the office and at the local saloon. After the branch moved to a more sophisticated new site, a former furniture store, the brokers set up a party room in the basement where the furnace was located. The "boom-boom room" was adjacent to the conference room where brokers were praised or scorned at mandatory weekly meetings. The office emphasized making the highest commissions possible, with little concern about customers. The brokers often engaged in questionable practices, such as pushing debatable stocks and exaggerating or concealing the performance of mutual funds. Punishment for such actions was rare. At the time, illegal practices, such as insider trading, were common. The public was mostly unaware of boiler room tactics, such as cold call scripts filled with exaggerations.

Throughout the security industry, and at Shearson/American Express, in particular, women were treated poorly, as Pam Martens found when she joined the office in 185. At 5, she sought a job where she could make good money to support her young son, Sean. But when she started in the brokerage's training program, she earned $1,000 a year while male trainees were paid $0,000.

Over the next decade, Martens did the best she could to survive and do well in spite of the difficult environment. She endured continual harassment, mistreatment of customers, and fights between competing brokers. She frequently heard the salesman around the corner from her scream at paying customers. The salesmen often shouted and pounded their fists as they argued about who got what account. Marten's first assignment was to work in the basement bullpen making cold calls for the more experienced upstairs staff. Meanwhile, veteran brokers were stocking the boom-boom room with party supplies. She worked with eight male brokers, and at first with two other women, and later, with three.

However, these women encountered harassing incidents over and over. For example, one broker ranted about not only women, but also blacks and Jews. When Martens graduated from the bullpen to her own private office, she kept her door closed, but the outrageous behavior around her continued. Once, the men held a belching contest. Another time, they wrote disparaging comments on the board about the sexual practices of one of the female workers. Cuneo tried to reduce Pam's earnings after she started doing very well. He attempted to limit her to a $40,000 a year salary after she earned $80,000 in commissions, though she refused. He also transferred some of her accounts to other brokers. Still, she managed to survive and prosper.

The event that triggered Martens to become a Whistle-blower happened in 14. Cuneo announced that he expected sales assistants to volunteer personal time each month at the Hospice of Long Island, his favorite charity. Employee Roberta Thorman complained that this was unfair. Martens began to see the office's other wrongs against women in this context. Martens launched a "mass awakening" of women in the industry by meeting with Thorman and contacting some of the women who had worked in Garden City. Common patterns of mistreatment emerged. She began to believe it would be necessary to sue Smith Barney, particularly since standard complaints to the manager and the human resource department proved ineffective. Accordingly, in October 14, she wrote a six-page letter to Smith Barney's new president James Dimon. Her letter detailed a series of complaints. She described the bad treatment several women had experienced and suggested that someone was covering up for Cuneo. As Dimon considered what to do, Cuneo struck back with a counteroffensive. Three brokers said that if she did not retract her letter, they would dig up dirt about her. She refused to back down and, as Dimon investigated, he began to realize that more and more of her allegations were true. He was under pressure to bury the charges, even when Martens herself reported that Cuneo made rape and death threats against her if his career was threatened. Eventually Martens realized that she had to sue her employer.

Martens hired Judith Vladeck, a 70-year old employment attorney, known for successfully suing big companies and earning settlements in exchange for her clients remaining silent about past ordeals. Vladeck suggested launching a class-action suit against Smith Barney, because that was the only way to get around the mandatory arbitration. Wall street employees had to sign away their rights to taking complaints to court in order to obtain jobs. Vladeck started by filing forms with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a required prelude to a civil rights suit. She asked Martens and two other Smith Barney employees, Judy Mione and Lorraine Parker, to look for more plaintiffs among current and former employees. Within days of the EEOC filing, Mione and Martens both began to suffer retaliation. Checks were missing from three of Marten's client accounts; other brokers recruited her clients. Eventually, Martens was fired for refusing to attend a mandatory branch meeting. She replied that she could no longer attend branch meetings due to the "constant abuse, ridicule and harassment" at the all male sessions. She was given an hour to pack her desk and leave. After being turned down by Merrill Lynch and Dean Witter, she was hired by A.G. Edwards.

Vladeck proceeded slowly and cautiously, accumulating research, but Martens became impatient and hired different lawyers, Linda D. Friedman and Mary Stowell at Leng Stowell Friedman and Verson. Friedman and Stowell had represented women in very much the same situation against the Olde Discount Company. Friedman and Stowell agreed that a class action suit was the only way to be seen in court. When the new team filed fresh EEOC charges, they added retaliation and defamation to Marten's grievances, since she had been fired. Her May 16 filing became the lead claim that other female Smith Barney employees could join.

The complaint was filed against Jamie Dimon and Nick Cuneo, plus the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), the forums where most Wall Street employment cases were arbitrated. Suing them highlighted the unfairness of mandatory arbitration.

The case against Smith Barney and the other defendants soon became a major news story. It exposed the pervasive harassment against women throughout the securities industry. Women from Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch began calling Martens to describe the discrimination and harassment at their firms. A group of female Merrill Lynch employees sued their company. Though Smith Barney and the securities industry tried to fight back, the news media displayed their discriminatory practices. In 17, Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs did a 0/0 interview featuring stories of lewd comments, unwanted sexual advances and a boss who stripped in front of other people. The National Organization for Women (NOW) gave its "Women of Courage" award to the Smith Barney plaintiffs.

Martens dropped out of the suit and fired her lawyers. She challenged Friedman and Stowell's negotiated settlement, because it omitted key principles that she felt very adamant about, such as an end to mandatory arbitration. She objected to the fact that the settlement provided no lump sum or fund for women, just an internal $15 million for a diversity program at Smith Barney. Martens felt the settlement was selling out. A few other women joined her, including Judy Mione, who hired Gary Phelen at Garrison, Phelan, Levin-Epstein, Chimes and Richardson to represent them. After many hearings, the first Martens suit, now without Martens, got certified as a class action by the judge, even though Martens objected. Additional class members were invited to file individual grievances. Meanwhile, Smith Barney made changes itself, such as firing some offenders, advancing women to new positions and starting diversity programs.

Martens and Mione failed in their separate civil law suit. The judge ruled that because they were no longer part of the original case, they had "lost their opportunity to pursue their individual claims." Phelan appealed, but Martens received no settlement. The only thing she got out of the whole ordeal was perhaps the satisfaction of knowing that her case helped open the door about Wall Street's treatment of female employees.

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