Metro

Novartis aware of gender discrimination for years, lawyer says

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis has known for years that “favoritism and an old-boys network” within the company results in discrimination against its female sales reps, but covered it up with an empty “PR campaign,” a lawyer charged this morning.

“The evidence will show you that this isn’t really a ‘he-said, she-said’ scenario…Everyone knew there was a problem,” lawyer Katherine Kimpel said in her opening statement at a $200 million, class-action trial in Manhattan federal court.

Kimpel said an outside consultant’s report in 2003 found unfair practices in the company’s human-resources department — including the lack of adequate grievance procedures — but “Novartis let it keep on happening.”

She also 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.”

Even after the plaintiffs brought those allegations to light in their 2004 suit against the Swiss-owned firm, it took Novartis two more years to fire manager Brian Aiello, Kimpel said.

Novartis lawyer Richard Schnadig countered in his opening statement that “progress is being made, but it doesn’t happen overnight.”

Schnadig acknowledged that 70 percent of the company’s managers are male, but blamed it large part on a mandatory, three-month training program at Novartis’ New Jersey headquarters that many women forgo to avoid being separated from their families.

“Any disproportionality that exists in the managerial work force isn’t the result of discrimination,” he said.

Schnadig, who caused chuckles when he accidentally knocked over an easel that Kimpel used to display some poster-sized exhibits, accused the plaintiffs’ experts of skewing their analysis of company salaries by ignoring income earned by women who didn’t work a full year.

He said said many of the plaintiffs never complained about their treatment while employed, and that “successful” female Novartis executives would testify about the opportunities for women at the company.

“This isn’t a company with a glass ceiling. We have a lot of women vice presidents,” he said.

Schnadig also said that while the internal investigation of Aiello “probably took a little longer than it should have,” the obnoxious boss was eventually subjected to “industrial capital punishment.”