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Merrill Lynch Women Fight for Equal Treatment - women sues Merrill Lynch and Company Inc. for sex discrimination - Brief Article
Progressive, The, Sept, 1999 by Deborah Prussel
Chicago
Merrill Lynch is up against a very angry mother.
In 1995, Marybeth Cremin, a thirteen-year broker and a vice president at the firm, was managing between $60 and $70 million in assets and producing about $400,000 annually for the company. Because of complications with a pregnancy, Cremin took medical leave in December 1994. Under Merrill Lynch policy, she was entitled to twenty-six weeks of paid leave. After thirteen weeks, Cremin says, the company changed her status and docked her benefits.
After her baby was born, she says, Joseph Gannotti, her manager, proposed a change in her employment that would cause her to turn over her clients to male brokers. "He told me that if I gave [the client list] up, I could become a financial planner and would receive 50 percent of the previous year's income," she says.
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Cremin finally accepted Gannotti's proposal in July of 1995 after repeated pressure from Merrill Lynch, including questioning from Gannotti on how a woman could combine career and family and do it well, she says. She turned over her accounts to other brokers in the office, informing her clients that she would remain at Merrill Lynch. While she was awaiting the final terms of the revised agreement with Gannotti, Cremin says she was issued an employment termination notice without explanation. Merrill Lynch says she resigned.
Cremin repeatedly called Gannotti in disbelief, but her phone calls were never returned, she says. "I was shocked. You just can't terminate a thirteen-year employee after bed rest." In September of 1995, Cremin went to see the Chicago-based law firm Stowell & Friedman.
The firm filed a class action lawsuit against Merrill Lynch on behalf of Cremin and seven other women. "This type of discrimination and situation is rampant," says lead lawyer Mary Stowell. "There is an industrywide problem on issues of pay parity, mentoring, support staff advancement and promotion, maternity and sick leave, and sexual harassment. Only 12 to 15 percent of the retail brokers are women, and the percentages are even less for minorities."
Merrill Lynch denies the charge that the company docked Cremin's benefits and also denies that Gannotti ever offered her the position of financial planner. In July 1998, the company instituted a new process to address employee complaints, says Merrill Lynch spokesman Bill Halldin. "Merrill Lynch has increased its efforts to recruit women through ads and search firms," he says. "Once the women join, there is a training program and a network of women."
Stowell's class action suit against Merrill Lynch has grown to approximately 900 claims from women within the company.
According to a June 4 memo from Launny Steffens, who is in charge of Merrill Lynch's private client offices around the country, the company is "prepared either to begin settlement discussions or to seek additional information on about one third of the 900 claims." Stowell says that Merrill Lynch will probably file over half of the remaining claims for mediation in late fall.
And Cremin? Stowell says that the eight original plaintiffs are part of a group of sixty-two women whose claims Merrill Lynch wants to resolve right away.
For more information, visit the web site www.classactionmerrill.com or contact Mary Stowell, Stowell & Friedman, 321 S. Plymouth Court, Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60604. Or call 1-800-699-9439.
COPYRIGHT 1999 The Progressive, Inc.
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