CRST Expedited - or - Women Recruited by 'Strauss-Kahn' Trucking

Women have been telling family and friends about the male chimpanzees who call themselves trainers for a long, long time. The jury's verdict against CRST should deliver a heads-up to the skeptics.
From my personal experience, and those of friends in the industry, sexual harassment goes on in CDL schools (PTDI included), and to varying degrees in several major companies who hire rookies. Just having a company policy on "sexual harassment" doesn't really mean much if it's not enforced. Oh, but there's a glossy manual all about it that they give to everybody at orientation. LOL.

5/17/2011
CRST Says it Will Appeal $1.5 Million Harassment Verdict

A California jury last week handed down a $1.5 million verdict against CRST Expedited after a 24-day trial where a former driver trainee alleged the company allowed her driver trainer to sexually harass her.

According to published reports, Karen Shank was a 45-year-old trainee in 2005 when she went out on the road with trainer John Wilson for a 28-day training period. She quit after completing the training and in 2006 sued CRST, claiming the company failed to prevent unwanted touching and sexual comments from Wilson.

The jury ordered $1.17 million in punitive damages, three times the actual damages, finding the company and its trainer showed a conscious disregard for Shank's rights.

CRST says it plans to appeal the verdict, saying it was very disappointed in the jury's findings.

It's not the first time CRST Expedited has been targeted with a sexual harassment lawsuit involving trainers. In February 2010, a federal judge ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hand over $4.5 million in attorney fees to CRST Van Expedited, which was sued in 2007 by the federal agency for allowing male drivers to sexually harass female drivers in truck sleeper berths, when they were paired together for training purposes.

A judge rejected the EEOC's claims that CRST Van Expedited had tolerated sexual harassment by its employees and found that the EEOC owed CRST for its troubles because the agency didn't perform a proper investigation into the matter.

But at the time of the May 17 judgment, jurors reported to Karen Shank's attorney that by the end of the 24-day trial, they had found flaws with CRST’s “enforcement and investigation practices on how they dealt with her client’s complaints.”

Elizabeth Riles, a partner with the law firm Bohbot & Riles in Oakland, CA, told Land Line on Friday, May 13, that her client, Karen Shank, was a trainee for CRST in 2005 when she was assigned John Wilson as her trainer.

Riles said Shank completed her driver training, but quit a day after she was assigned a male co-driver. She said Shank then filed a lawsuit in 2006 after her complaints about her trainer’s sexual comments and unwanted touching weren’t addressed by the company.

“This was definitely a long haul for our client because she pretty much left the industry after working for CRST,” Riles said. “It’s been a long six years of litigating and fighting, but at the end of the day, the jury believed our client. They believed that CRST didn’t do what they needed to do to prevent harassment in the workplace, and that they certainly didn’t do what they needed to do to protect our client from it.”

Riles said Shank’s former trainer, Wilson, wasn’t fired by the company after being notified of her complaints alleging sexual harassment. Instead, he left the company voluntarily a while later to join another trucking company. The jury did find punitive damages against Wilson for $3,500 in the action.

“When you step onto the truck as a trainee or as a new team driver, for the most part you are getting on the truck with a complete stranger,” Riles said. “You are expected to have real trust with that other person, and you are putting your life into their hands. But sometimes that trust is broken, and companies must pay attention to these types of concerns or complaints.”

 

I tried to reply but the system here lost my last one, so here goes again. I don't think there will be two of these, but SORRY if it happens.

Anyway - as a woman, I've had to deal with lesbian predators and male predators. But on the trucking side (so far), it's just been men.

Nobody is saying women can't work alongside men. Nobody is saying women can't be at fault. But when abuse or assaults happen, a carrier has to mean business when it comes to protecting a driver.

Even if there is no physical touching, there is possible harassment anyway. How would you like constant sex talk from your trainer? I've had to deal with that one.

How about this? When I was a rookie, taking my sleep time in the berth, this guy played a station on Sirius at full volume, and the program was nothing but smut.

Bad memories, and I don't want to dredge it up again. Writing up my last comment, and seeing it disappear into cyberspace, is enough for one night.

Guts is what girls need. Webcams? 24-hour audio recordings? Whatever it takes.

It takes guts for a woman to drive an 18-wheeler. None of us gets a CDL just watching DWTS.

But if you're physically afraid of your trainer, and haven't gotten a night's sleep for 3 days, you're going to be a danger on the road, to yourself and everybody else.

 

This is all sad and wrong to me, too. But I'm not saying women are special and have extra needs - therefore making women 'bad news' for employment in the industry.

I am saying that student drivers, men and women, are special. A man can be taught to back without being yelled at, berated, and threatened. Drivers who have been OTR for a decade or more have no idea - unless they read this forum regularly - that verbal abuse and humiliation are SOP (standard operating procedure) on the part of trainers.

All trainers need to pass legitimate psychological/behavior tests before they are assigned a student driver.

What about another trainer I had who was such a winner? He was a vet, and he had also driven in the Middle East warzone, working for a private contractor.

My second day with him in the truck, he told me he was all broken up inside because of his divorce years ago and his ex-wife taking his two little girls. He said he had gone back overseas to drive after his tour of duty -- hoping he would be killed. He wanted to commit suicide.

When he came back Stateside, instead, the tough working conditions gave him a back injury. He was on major painkillers, and the trucking company had told him to go cold turkey on the meds. That was just before I went out on the road with him. Freak me out.

This guy should never have been allowed to train.

This whole issue goes far beyond women trying to do what they have to do to go solo and earn a living. The whole issue is both men and women putting their lives on the line behind the wheel in situations which are explosive.

Factor in the sexual component, and the results are Stephen King.