Sex in the Factory

When Charles Santangelo, a magazine and comic-book printer of the Charlton Press Inc. of Derby, Conn. (Atomic Mouse, Hush Hush, Secrets of Young Brides), returned from vacation last February, he got a double shock. He heard reports that the firm's composing-room employees had been "molesting" women workers in the plant--patting them, whistling at them, and making gamy comments about what Brooklyn calls "the built." He also learned that the eight men had joined the International Typographical Union. They were all fired. Last week, in a tough yet tongue-in-cheek decision, a National Labor Relations Board trial examiner ruled that union organizing, not sex, was responsible for the firings, ordered the men reimbursed with lost pay. He also read Boss Santangelo a lecture of his own on factory life.

NLRB Examiner John F. Funke decided that the pattings and improprieties had come a month before the men were fired and had been regarded as "trivial" by management at the time, thus could not be the reason for the firings. "Credulity," said Funke, "is a girdle that can be stretched only so far." Funke agreed that some employers would "sacrifice the immediate interest of their business to maintain a standard of propriety and decorum at which Victoria herself would not cavil," but, he said, Santangelo "could not be described as Victorian." Added Examiner Funke: "The contiguous employment of male and female in offices and plants has inevitably led to a relaxing of formal barriers and to a tolerance of casual badinage and conduct not free from overtones of sex."

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