Corporate Dysfunction

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

A reminiscence of the late Lorinda Cherry gave a great (read: terrible) example of corporate dysfunction:

She was hired…at Bell Labs [in the early 1970s] as a TA—the typical fate of women graduates, while their male counterparts were hired as full members of the technical staff. It would take another decade for that unequal treatment to be rectified. Even then, one year she received a statement of benefits that explained what her wife would receive upon her death. When Lorinda called HR to confirm that they meant spouse, they said no, and demanded that the notice be returned. (She declined.) It seemed that husbands would not get equal treatment until AT&T lost a current court case. The loss was a foregone conclusion; still AT&T preferred to pay lawyers rather than widowers, and fought it to the bitter end.