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Life on a drilling rig is dirty and dangerous work.
Robert McKinnis understands that. He has worked for six years on rigs in North Texas, mainly around Mineral Wells.
What McKinnis doesn't understand is the sexual harassment that he says came with the job.
At first, McKinnis said, a boss began making "homosexual-type comments" to him. Later, McKinnis said, the boss began watching pornography in the rig's control room. The boss rubbed against him, he claimed.
From the onset, McKinnis said, he complained to the boss' supervisor at Saxon Drilling and to the company's human resources department. He also secretly recorded conversations with the boss.
McKinnis, a married father of twin girls, said he wasn't taken seriously.
"I felt like they didn't want to deal with it," McKinnis said.
Such sentiments are common in the workplace, experts say, because some employers tend to downplay sexual harassment complaints from men. But there has been an increase in the number of complaints filed in the past decade, in part because of a 1998 Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for same-sex harassment lawsuits.
McKinnis said he filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Saxon Drilling, a Canadian oil and gas drilling company with an office in Weatherford.
Officials with Saxon declined to comment because the complaint is still under investigation. Attorney Ashley Scheer, who is representing the company, would not address McKinnis' allegations, but said, "No lawsuit has been filed, and, if one is, we will vigorously defend it."
McKinnis said that since filing the complaint, he has been subjected to rumors, criticism and stress. It is not every day, his attorney said, that you hear about a man accusing another man of sexual harassment - and certainly not someone who works on a drilling rig.
"It is very unique," said Stephen Drinnon, the Dallas civil attorney representing McKinnis.
Shari Julian, a faculty member at Texas Wesleyan University and a counselor who specializes in sexual harassment, said same-sex harassment is actually rampant in the workplace, but many victims don't report it because they fear that they will face retaliation, that they won't be believed or that people will think they are gay.
"They would rather keep quiet about egregious acts," Julian said.
Julian said it is most common in workplaces where rules are not in place to protect employees from being harassed.
"People who have lousy boundaries feel free to run rampant," she said. "People go to work to do a job, not be harassed. They should have assurances of a positive work environment."
Lawsuits increasing
The employment commission's figures do not specify which claims of workplace harassment involved same-sex accusers, but the number of men who have made sexual harassment claims has increased over the past decade. In the 1997, for example, men filed about 11 percent of the 15,889 sexual harassment charges received by the EEOC. In 2007, the EEOC received 12,510 charges of sexual harassment, with men filing 16 percent of them.Experts say same-sex sexual harassment suits have increased since a 1998 Supreme Court ruling that determined same-sex harassment claims are actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The rules came in a case involving an offshore oil rig worker who said he quit his job because he was being sexually harassed by his male supervisor. A district court initially ruled that Title VII only applied to sexual harassment involving the opposite sex, and that ruling was affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court's reversal was precedent-setting, experts say, because employers could no longer view sexual harassment between men as horseplay.
"When sexual harassment became an area of litigation, men had to change their attitude toward women," said Karen A. Ward, a partner with the California-based General Counsel law firm who specializes in sexual harassment and discrimination training. "Now, they have to change it toward each other."
Downplayed complaints
Ward said it is not unusual for employers to downplay sexual harassment complaints involving two or more men.
"I do not think they take it as seriously as a [complaint from a] woman," Ward said. "They are more apt to shrug it off and not handle it the way they are legally obligated to. They think they can work it out amongst themselves. They don't think lawsuits. With a woman, they are like, 'Oh sued.' no, we are going to get "
Ward said that men, in general, also view offensive conduct differently.
"It is OK to talk crudely," she said, adding that men may be stigmatized or ridiculed for not being "man enough" to handle it.
But, she said, that old-school mindset does not make it OK; sexual harassment laws are in place to protect all employees, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
"No one should have to be subjected to horrible things," she said.
After McKinnis filed the EEOC complaint, Saxon offered to allow him to go on paid administrative leave - and he agreed. Since then, he said he has been fielding phone calls from co-workers who heard he was "fired" for having sexual relations with his supervisor.
"I want people to know that it didn't happen," McKinnis said.
McKinnis said the man who harassed him has been fired. Officials with Saxon declined to comment." After the page is created, please link it to "To read more about Robert's story in a recent news article, click here" I attached a photo of McKinnis a few days ago, that also needs to go on this page.
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