Court Opinion

ID: 9493114
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:58:37.844182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:39.719130
License: Public Domain

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Nearly two decades after it fired the first woman to complain of Gary Amos’ harassment, Ameritech at last did what it should have done years before — it fired him. By that time, Amos had sexually harassed at least eighteen of Ameritech’s female employees, variously touching the women, exposing himself to them, pepper*826ing them with suggestive remarks, masturbating in their presence, and rubbing his erect penis against their bodies. Long after it was clear to the company that it had a serial harasser in its employ, Ameri-tech botched any number of opportunities to deal with his misconduct decisively. It warned and suspended Amos without effect; it promised harsher sanctions in the future but did not follow through; when it finally resolved to fire Amos in 1992, it inexcusably missed the thirty-day deadline imposed by the collective bargaining agreement; and even after that fumble, Ameritech waited for three more women to complain of harassment before it ultimately terminated Amos. The evidence was thus more than sufficient to support thé jury’s conclusion that Ameritech’s response to the harassment was not only negligent, but indicative of a reckless indifference to the rights of the women in its employ, such that punitive damages were appropriate. With that much of the majority opinion, I wholeheartedly concur.
I do not agree, however, that the district judge abused his discretion in excluding evidence of Ameritech’s professed concern for the outcome of arbitration that might have ensued had the company fired Amos sooner than it did. The arbitration defense posits a conflict between the obligation that Title VII imposes on an employer to protect its workers from sexual harassment and certain provisions of the collective bargaining agreement between Ameritech and its unionized workforce. More specifically, the defense assumes that an arbitrator interpreting the agreement might not agree with — and might well undo — disciplinary action that Ameri-tech has taken in fulfillment of its statutory obligation to address workplace harassment. Proof along that fine, Ameritech posits, would have shown the jury why its decision not to discharge Amos in December 1992 and again- in June 1993 was reasonable: not wishing to see an arbitrator reinstate Amos, it was simply biding its time until it could fire Amos under circumstances that an arbitrator would agree warranted his discharge. What Ameritech wants, then, is for the jury to evaluate the company’s conduct not solely in terms of what was reasonably necessary to stop the harassment that Amos was inflicting on his co-workers, but also in terms of 'what the collective bargaining agreement and an arbitrator might have permitted.
I believe my colleagues are mistaken in opening the door to this defense. Title VII imposes an unequivocal duty on employers to take reasonable measures to stop harassment. Never before today have we held that the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement — or, more accurately, concerns about how an arbitrator might interpret them — can modify this obligation. What Ameritech has won is the right to invoke the collective bargaining agreement as an excuse for sitting on its hands while Amos kept on terrorizing his female colleagues. In fact, however, nothing in the collective bargaining agreement forced Ameritech to forego discharging Amos. And to the extent that an employer’s duties under Title VII and a collective bargaining agreement may conflict, its obligation to protect its workers from harassers should take precedence, as Judge McKinney heldi To permit the jury to let an employer off the hook because of its professed concerns about how an arbitrator might interpret the collective bargaining agreement in effect holds unionized employers to a lesser standard of care in eliminating workplace harassment.
1.
What one must appreciate at the outset is that Ameritech’s liability in this case hinges not on its failure to act on any one occasion in particular, but on its pattern of inaction in the face of Amos’ unrelenting misconduct. Consider what the company knew when the amended version of Title VII took effect in November of 1991. By that time, Amos had harassed at least thirteen women at Ameritech. His acts already had run the entire gamut of harassment, from inappropriate remarks *827to intimate and unwelcome touching. Indeed, by my count, Amos had already exposed himself at least five times by then and had rubbed his erect penis against startled co-workers on at least as many occasions. Nothing that Amos did after 1991, then, could have come as a surprise to Ameritech. The company had already disciplined Amos on several occasions and had twice threatened to fire him if he persisted in the harassment. See Tr. 193, 570. It also knew, as of 1991, that the discipline and warnings had proven ineffective; for in investigating the complaints of Debbie Murray and an anonymous coworker that year, Ameritech learned that Amos was continuing to engage in sexual misconduct. Tr. 584-93, 811-18.
With this history in mind, one would think that Ameritech, if genuinely concerned about the welfare of its female employees, would have taken more aggressive action in response to the acts of harassment that occurred after the Civil Rights Act of 1991 took effect. Instead, the company bungled opportunity after opportunity to take decisive action against Amos. In early 1992, after Jennifer Rice complained of inappropriate remarks and physical contact, the company simply told Amos that he was not to touch anyone in the office and warned him — again—that further misconduct might result in suspension or termination. Tr. 596-97. It did not fire him, it did not suspend him, it did not dock his pay, it did not, in fact, take any punitive action against him. It even rejected Amos’ own suggestion that he be transferred out of the small business office (Tr. 1096-97), where ninety-five percent of his co-workers were women (see Tr. 177, 408, 843). Later that year, Amos touched Debbie Wentland inappropriately — thereby violating his supervisor’s admonition not to have physical contact with his coworkers — -and rubbed his erect penis through his pants while talking to her. The company’s EEO coordinator recommended his discharge for violating the no-touch rule (Tr. 776-77, 847), but her recommendation sat unread on the labor relations manager’s desk until after the thirty-day period for discipline specified by the collective bargaining agreement had already expired (Tr. 644). The company at that point concluded it could take no action against Amos.
Having muffed the decision to fire Amos in 1992, Ameritech should have been fully prepared to take swift and decisive action when the next incident of misconduct occurred. See Tr. 255, 648, 829-30, 1193. Yet, even after Lori Everts filed an E.E.O.C. charge asserting that Amos had been sexually harassing her for a period of two years, the company did not so much as investigate her complaint to ascertain for itself whether Amos was indeed harassing Everts as he had been other women at Ameritech. See Tr. 930-31, 941, 944-45, 1141. When Amos wrote the “you look so sexy today” note to his supervisor Patricia Wolter in June 1993, Ameritech opted simply to suspend him, a measure that had already proven ineffective. See Tr. 406. This freed Amos to harass Wendy Pollard, who began to work with him in November 1993. After months of touching her hair, staring at her with his belt unbuckled, telling her that he was obsessed with her, displaying photos of lingerie-clad and topless women to her, Amos finally drove Pollard to the EEO coordinator when she discovered him sitting at his desk, with his penis exposed and erect, masturbating. Finally, the company got it right — it suspended him immediately pending investigation and ultimately terminated him.
Ameritech thus allowed the equivalent of an armed torpedo to wander about the workplace for years wreaking havoc upon its female employees. At least eighteen women — that we know of — fell victim to Amos’ harassment. To focus upon Ameri-tech’s failure to act in any single instance — as its arbitration defense invites us to do — is to miss the larger picture. By November of 1991, Ameritech knew that it had an employee who was prone to sexually harass his co-workers in extremely offensive ways, and as to whom repeated *828warnings and disciplinary measures had proven utterly ineffective. Yet, the company continued to respond to Amos’ misconduct with the same day-late-and-a-dollar-short measures it had tried before. Therefore, the first and most important point with respect to Ameritech’s liability is not that it failed to discharge Amos in response to the Wentland and Wolter complaints in particular, but that it missed those and so many other chances to take action reasonably calculated to stop his harassment — including not only termination, but demotion, transfer, intensive supervision, warnings to his uninitiated coworkers, and any number of other disciplinary and prophylactic measures.
2.
As I noted at the outset, Ameritech’s arbitration defense presupposes some degree of tension between the collective bargaining agreement and Title VII. In December of 1992, the asserted conflict arose from the collective bargaining agreement’s thirty-day limit on disciplinary action: by the time Ameritech was prepared to fire Amos in response to Wentland’s complaint, thirty days had already passed. If it had gone ahead and fired him after that point, Ameritech posits,- an arbitrator might well have declared the discharge invalid and reinstated him. The first and most glaring problem with this line of defense is that the purported clash was one wholly of Ameritech’s making.
Only Ameritech is to blame for the failure to discharge Amos in a timely fashion. The collective bargaining agreement gave Ameritech thirty days within which to impose discipline on Amos. Ameritech does not argue that it was unable to make the discharge decision within' this period of time. In fact, the only explanation that Ameritech has offered for not meeting the deadline is that its EEO coordinator, Monica Sharp, left on vacation immediately after she made the recommendation to discharge Amos, and labor relations manager Joyce Leek did not review the recommendation until she herself returned from vacation, after the thirty-day deadline for action had expired. So nothing precluded Ameritech from firing Amos; it simply dropped the ball. Standing alone, this is, at the least, a classic instance of neglect. See Universal Reins. Corp. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 16 F.3d 125, 128 (7th Cir.1994). Considered in light of Amos’ extensive history of harassment, and Ameritech’s own professed certainty that an arbitrator would never have permitted a late discharge, missing the deadline amounts to something much worse.
It is thus more than a bit ironic that Ameritech’s own unreasonable failure to act within the constraints of the collective bargaining agreement has been transformed into a defense to liability for both compensatory and punitive damages. The thirty-day time limit was not one unilaterally imposed on Ameritech by the union. The company consented to that restraint in negotiations with the union, and presumably it did so with confidence that thirty days was enough time to make discharge and other disciplinary decisions. Having agreed to the time limit, and presumably knowing from past experience that an arbitrator might well declare a discharge made beyond that time frame invalid, Ameritech knew that it had to discharge Amos within thirty days or not at all.
To accept Ameritech’s argument on its own terms, then, is to appreciate the gravity of the company’s mistake in allowing the deadline to expire. If, as Ameritech posits, the thirty-day time limit on discipline was ironclad, then the only pertinent question insofar as the reasonableness of Ameritech’s actions and state of mind is concerned is what Ameritech did during those thirty days. The answer is nothing. It was entirely fair, in that context, for the E.E.O.C. to castigate Ameritech for not discharging Amos when, as the company admits, its own slip-up accounts for the inability to take that step. See Tr. 1301-04, 1356-57. It was also entirely within the district court’s discretion to prevent Ameritech from attempting to pin the fail*829ure to discharge Amos on the likelihood that an arbitrator would order him reinstated. Only Ameriteeh is to blame for the situation in which it found itself. Knowing that it had to act within thirty days, the company dallied, allowing the deadline to come and go without doing anything. That the company may have wished to fire Amos, that it might have done so eventually but for its fears about what an arbitrator would say, is beside the point. See Ameriteeh Br. 17-18, 34. It would be a bit like a reckless driver claiming that he meant to use more care after he has already mowed down a pedestrian — good intentions mean nothing after the fact. Ameriteeh is no less culpable for allowing the deadline to expire before acting on Sharp’s recommendation to discharge Amos than it would be if it never considered discharging him at all.
There is a second, but equally important, flaw in the arbitration defense insofar as it revolves around the thirty-day limit. Ameriteeh would have us believe that the jury was kept in the dark as to the reason for the company’s decision not to fire Amos in December 1992. Its opening brief, for example, asserts that “Ameriteeh was prevented from presenting the evidence explaining why it did not terminate Amos at that time — specifically, because an arbitrator would have reinstated him.” Ameriteeh Br. 34 (emphasis in original); see also Reply Br. 12-13. Yet, as my colleagues acknowledge, Ameriteeh was able to explain that it did not discharge Amos in response to Debbie Wentland’s complaint because it did not effectuate that decision within the thirty-day time frame specified by the collective bargaining agreement. See, e.g., Tr. 1327. In fact, as the record reveals, the thirty-day limit on disciplinary action was discussed again and again (and again) during the trial — on more than twenty occasions, by my count. See Tr. 38-39, 202-03, 212, 219-26, 234-35, 248-55, 259-260, 261, 279, 280, 291, 335-40, 521, 608-09, 627, 642-48, 777, 779, 807, 926, 1103-04, 1145-46, 1301-04, 1327,1356-57. The jury was thus fully aware of the deadline and the constraints it imposed on Ameriteeh’s ability to deal with Amos. Evidence that an arbitrator would have enforced that deadline might have been apropos had a witness or the E.E.O.C. opined that Ameriteeh was free to ignore the deadline and fíre Amos anyway. Ameriteeh suggests that this was the case. Ameriteeh Br. 34; Reply Br. 12-13. My colleagues appear to agree. See ante at 825. They have been misled. A review of the record makes clear that no one — no one — ever suggested that Ameri-tech could have fired Amos after the thirty-day deadline had expired. On the contrary, the attorneys in their questions and argument, and the witnesses in their testimony, uniformly presumed that the time limit was inviolable.1 As far as the jury knew, then, there was no way around the thirty-day deadline. The notion that there was a compelling need for the arbitration evidence is therefore a fallacy. As the record makes plain, the E.E.O.C. chastised Ameriteeh not for being unwilling to try and circumvent the deadline after it had already expired, but for failing to meet the *830deadline in the first instance. See Tr. 1301-04; 1356-57.2
3.
In June of 1993, another provision in the collective bargaining agreement purportedly stood in the way of discharging Amos. It was then that Amos with the help and encouragement of a female co-worker wrote a note to Patti Wolter telling her “Patti, you look so sexy today.” Tr. 387 (emphasis in original). Rather than discharging him, Ameritech opted to impose the most serious form of discipline short of discharge — it suspended him for thirty days. The collective bargaining agreement permitted discharges only for “just cause,” and if permitted Ameritech-would have shown that it had lost one or more arbitrations over the just cause issue and that in all probability, had Ameritech fired Amos for writing the note, he would have won reinstatement from an arbitrator.
One can readily appreciate why an arbitrator might not think that the note by itself constituted just cause to discharge Amos. Although troubling to Ms. Wolter— as it indeed might have been to any reasonable person — the note standing alone was relatively innocuous. In view of Amos’ lengthy tenure with the company, terminating him simply because he wrote that single note to a co-worker would be a harsh form of discipline. Indeed, a Title VII claim founded on the note alone would surely falter, for without more it would not establish the objectively hostile working environment that the case law requires. E.g., Rennie v. Dalton, 3 F.3d 1100, 1107 (7th Cir.1993), cert, denied, 510 U.S. 1111, 114 S.Ct. 1054, 127 L.Ed.2d 375 (1994) (“ ‘isolated and/or trivial remarks of a sexual nature’ do not satisfy the definition of sexual harassment”), quoting Downes v. F.A.A., 775 F.2d 288, 293 (Fed. Cir.1985), abrogated on other grounds by Harris v. Forklift Sys., Inc., 510 U.S. 17, 114 S.Ct. 367, 126 L.Ed.2d 295,'114 S.Ct. 367 (1993).
It is not at all clear, however, why the note, considered in the full context of Amos’ campaign of harassment, would not have constituted just cause for termination. By June of 1993, of course, Amos had a well-documented history of harassing women at Ameritech. What is more, the more severe manifestations of that harassment often were presaged or accompanied by remarks akin to the “you look so sexy” observation Amos made in his note to Wolter. Before Amos pushed his aroused body, against Jacquelyn Stine in 1988, for example, he told her that her hair was beautiful, that it was “just really delicious, or ... sensual,” and that he was in love with her. Tr. 73. And just before *831Amos followed Debbie Wentland around the office in November 1992 as he rubbed the erection in his pants, he patted her stomach and remarked “Oh, so you are going to be a mom.” Tr. 271-72. These examples, among many others, demonstrate all too well that statements of the kind Amos made to Wolter were neither isolated nor innocent. Typically, these remarks were part of a pattern of verbal and physical harassment which, left unchecked, simply escalated.
Why an arbitrator would blind himself to this pattern — and to the proven ineffectiveness of all disciplinary measures short of discharge in stopping Amos’ harassment — is left unexplained. Ameritech’s prediction of reinstatement seems to assume that the arbitrator would focus solely upon the event precipitating the discharge, without consideration of any of Amos’ pri- or conduct. Cf Chrysler Motors Corp. v. International Union, Allied Indus. Workers of America, 959 F.2d 685, 686 (7th Cir.1992) (arbitrator refused to consider other incidents of harassment that employer only discovered after it had already discharged worker), cert, denied, 506 U.S. 908, 113 S.Ct. 304, 121 L.Ed.2d 227 (1992). Yet, so far as the record reveals, nothing in the collective bargaining agreement so restricts the just cause inquiry. If it did, then we might well have a genuine clash between the collective bargaining agreement and Title VII that Ameritech posits. For Title VII would indeed expect Ameri-tech to have learned its lessons. When Amos wrote the note to Wolter, Ameritech must have known that he simply was not going to stop harassing his female coworkers, and that terminating him was the only way to bring the harassment to an end. See Tr. 233, 406, 630-31, 701. Indeed, one can read into Ameritech’s arbitration defense a concession that it knew as much; by the company’s own account, it was simply awaiting the best opportunity to make his discharge “stick.” See Ameri-tech Br. 17-18, 34. But in this record there is no proof that the collective bargaining agreement posed an obstacle to discharging Amos in June of 1993.
4.
Ameritech’s arbitration defense also presupposes that if Ameritech had discharged Amos in either December of 1992 or June of 1993 and an arbitrator had subsequently ordered him reinstated, that order would have been final. That is not the case. Even if an arbitrator had ordered Amos’ reinstatement, Ameritech could have contested that decision in court. As the district court recognized, courts can and do refuse to enforce arbitration awards when they conflict with explicit, well-defined public policy. Chrysler Motors, supra, 959 F.2d at 687; see generally United Paper-workers Int’l Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29, 43, 108 S.Ct. 364, 373-74, 98 L.Ed.2d 286 (1987); W.R. Grace & Co. v. Local Union 759, Int’l Union of United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum & Plastic Workers of America, 461 U.S. 757, 766, 103 S.Ct. 2177, 2183, 76 L.Ed.2d 298 (1983). The public has a strong interest, which Title VII embodies, in eliminating sex discrimination from the workplace. Chrysler Motors, 959 F.2d at 687. Reinstating an employee who either does not wish or is unable to refrain from sexually harassing his female co-workers presents an obvious clash with that interest. See, e.g., Stroeh-mann Bakeries, Inc. v. Local 776, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 969 F.2d 1436, 1442 (3d Cir.1992) (vacating arbitration award reinstating harasser who allegedly assaulted customer’s employee: “an award which fully reinstates an employee accused of sexual harassment without a determination that the harassment did not occur violates public policy”), cert, denied, 506 U.S. 1022, 113 S.Ct. 660, 121 L.Ed.2d 585 (1992); Newsday, Inc. v. Long Island Typographical Union, No. 915, 915 F.2d 840, 845 (2d Cir.1990) (vacating arbitration award reinstating serial harasser: “[The arbitrator’s] award of reinstatement completely disregarded the public policy against sexual harassment in the work place.”), cert, denied, 499 U.S. 922, 111 S.Ct. 1314, 113 L.Ed.2d 247 (1991); Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc. v. Utility Workers’ Union of America, No. 95 C 1672, 1996 WL 374143, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Jul. 3, 1996) (vacating arbitration award rein*832stating serial harasser: “Reinstatement of an employee who has already been issued a strong and unambiguous warning that any further sexual misconduct could lead to dismissal would contravene public policy condemning such behavior.”)- Ameritech thus had a firm basis on which to resist Amos’ reinstatement. Of course, we cannot know for certain how Ameritech would have fared in the effort to overturn an adverse decision by the arbitrator. But that is the point: having forsaken the opportunity to make its case to an arbitrator and, if necessary, to a court, Ameritech has left us all to speculate about what might have happened.
Moreover, it is not at all clear to me how Ameritech’s other employees would have been worse off had the company risked arbitration by discharging him in either December of 1992 or June of 1993. As Judge McKinney wrote, “Overlooked in this argument is the continuing adverse effect Amos’s conduct may have on the female employees while the employer waits until it thinks it may have enough evidence to overcome an arbitration decision.” R. 213 at 10. For whatever length of time it would havé taken for the anticipated arbitration and litigation over the discharge to be resolved, Amos would have been removed from the workplace, granting his female co-workers at least a temporary reprieve from his harassment. In the event of his reinstatement, Ameritech would have been just as capable of terminating him in the future if and when he resumed harassment as it was when the company decided in December 1992 and again in June 1993 to “wait and see” rather than discharging him on those occasions. See Chrysler Motors Coi'p. v. International Union, Allied Indus. Workers of America, 2 F.3d 760 (7th Cir.1993) (sustaining the immediate discharge of reinstated employee based on additional evidence of harassment). Only Ameritech, it seems to me, had anything, to gain by following the latter course, sparing itself the possible expense and bother of having to defend a discharge in arbitration and/or litigation.3
5.
Even assuming that there was an outright, irreconcilable conflict between the collective bargaining agreement and Title VII, I am not convinced that Ameritech’s obligation to protect its employees from harassment necessarily had to yield to the constraints imposed by its contract with the union. The district court may have overstated matters when it said that the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement must invariably give way to an employer’s obligations under the civil rights statutes (R. 213 at 9), for Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63, 97 S.Ct. 2264, 53 L.Ed.2d 113 (1977), and Eckles v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 94 F.3d 1041, 1051 (7th Cir.1996), cert, denied, 520 U.S. 1146, 117 S.Ct. 1318, 137 L.Ed.2d 480 (1997), reveal that this is not always the case. But neither of those precedents, on the other hand, gives an employer license to sit back while its workers are sexually harassed, simply because it believes that a provision of the collective bargaining agreement stands in the way of effective action.
TWA holds simply that Title VII does not require an employer to interfere with *833the seniority rights of some employees in order to accommodate the religious needs of others. The plaintiff in that case worked for an airline in a critical department that operated twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. After becoming involved in a religion that proscribed work on Saturdays and on certain religious holidays, the plaintiff asked that his work schedule be adjusted accordingly to give him those days off. Although the company had no difficulty finding volunteers to fill in for the plaintiff on the religious holidays that he observed, no one was willing to work in his stead on Saturdays. Consequently, the only means of accommodating the plaintiffs religious needs would have been to deprive more senior employees of their shift preferences by requiring one or more of those employees to take the Saturday shifts. The airline refused to take that step, and the Supreme Court concluded Title VII did not compel it to do so:
We agree that neither a collective-bargaining contract nor a seniority system may be employed to violate the statute, but we do not believe that the duty to accommodate requires TWA to take steps inconsistent with the otherwise valid agreement. Collective bargaining, aimed at effecting workable and enforceable agreements between management and labor, lies at the core of our national labor policy, and seniority provisions are universally included in these contracts. Without a clear and express indication from Congress, we cannot agree with Hardison and the E.E.O.C. that an agreed-upon seniority system must give way when necessary to accommodate religious observances.
432 U.S. at 79, 97 S.Ct. at 2274 (footnote omitted). The rights of other employees, as well as the unique importance of seniority provisions in collective bargaining, figured prominently in the Supreme Court’s analysis. “It would be anomalous,” the Court explained, “to conclude that by ‘reasonable accommodation’ Congress meant that an employer must deny the shift and job preference of some employees, as well as deprive them of their contractual rights, in order to accommodate or prefer the religious needs of others.... ” Id. at 81, 97 S.Ct. at 2275; see also id. at 85, 97 S.Ct. at 2277. The Court went on to note that the statute itself singles out seniority rights for special treatment, “mak[ing] clear that the routine application of a bona fide seniority system would not be unlawful under Title VII.” Id. at 82, 97 S.Ct. at 2275, quoting International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 352, 97 S.Ct. 1843, 1863, 52 L.Ed.2d 396 (1977).
Our own opinion in Eckles sounds the same theme. The issue there was whether the Americans with Disabilities Act required an employer to guarantee an employee a position compatible with his medical restrictions even if it meant “bumping” a more senior employee from the position in the first instance and preventing other employees with greater seniority from in turn “bumping” the plaintiff from that position later on. Accommodating him in this way “pose[d] a conflict not so much between the rights of the disabled individual and his employer and union,” we observed, “but between the rights of the disabled individual and those of his coworkers.” 94 F.3d at 1046. Relying on TWA and a host of other cases decided under both the Rehabilitation Act as well as the ADA, we concluded that the duty to reasonably accommodate the limitations of a disabled employee did not compel the employer to ignore the seniority rights of other workers. Id. at 1051. We were quite careful to emphasize the narrow reach of our opinion, however.
We emphasize that our conclusion is limited to individual seniority rights and should not be interpreted as a general finding that all provisions found in collective bargaining agreements are immune from limitation by the ADA duty to reasonably accommodate. The ADA does not lack force in the unionized workplace, and the duty to provide for the special needs of disabled workers cannot be voided by either skillful manipulation (such as a pretextual seniority system) or inadvertence. We recognize that many of the “reasonable accommodations” specifically proposed within the ADA also have effects on other workers, *834but find that collectively bargained seniority rights have a pre-existing special status in the law and that Congress to date has shown no intent to alter this status by the duties created under the ADA.
Id. at 1051-52; see also id. at 1046 n. 9 (“We most certainly do not here decide that all provisions of collective bargaining agreements will preempt a covered entity’s duty to reasonably accommodate a disabled employee under the ADA. We address only collectively-bargained seniority systems that establish rights in other employees.”).
My colleagues have taken a significant leap beyond the holdings and rationale of both TWA and Eckles in concluding that an employer may invoke the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement, and its concerns about how an arbitrator might enforce those provisions, as an excuse for the failure to remove a recalcitrant harasser from the workplace. Neither TWA nor Eckles remotely speaks to this issue, and fundamental differences between those cases and the one before us suggest that we should not be so quick to rely on them now. This case does not present the clash between the rights of the plaintiff and the rights of his co-workers that confronted the courts in those two cases. Indeed, seniority rights, which occupy a position of central importance in the collective bargaining process that was cited repeatedly in both TWA and Eckles, are not implicated here at all. Instead, we are dealing with two entirely different provisions of a collective bargaining agreement, neither one of which, as I have explained above, necessarily conflicts with the employer’s duty to deal with harassment proactively. To the extent that either of these provisions imposes a constraint that might prevent an employer from taking action that Title VII would otherwise require — as Ameritech’s arbitration defense supposes — we should hesitate to allow these provisions to trump an employer’s obligations under Title VII.
The thirty-day limit on discharging or otherwise disciplining an employee is simply that, a limitation on the timing rather than the substance of the action that an employer may take against an. employee. I do not doubt that, as a general matter, the employees and their union have a legitimate interest in seeing that deadline enforced; and certainly Amos, as the one facing termination, had a keen interest in the enforcement of that limit. But as a procedural limitation, the thirty-day limit surely ranks much lower in the hierarchy of importance among collective bargaining terms than seniority provisions, which were central to the rationale of TWA and Eckles. Recall too that the thirty-day limit is not absolute — Ameritech could have taken as much time as it wished to make the discharge decision if only it had suspended Amos immediately at the outset of its investigation. See ante at 830 n. 2. So as between the collective - bargaining agreement’s directive that discipline be meted out within thirty days, and Title VII’s command that employees be protected from sexual harassment, I have little doubt that the latter should prevail, as Judge McKinney reasoned.
The just cause provision of the collective bargaining agreement is, of course, more substantive. For that reason, it may occupy a position of more central importance to the collective bargaining process. That does not mean, however, that such a provision — or an arbitrator’s interpretation of it — will or should prevail over the employer’s Title VII duty to address workplace harassment. On the contrary, the case law already makes clear that the public interest in eradicating sexual harassment will in some instances take priority over an arbitrator’s assessment of just cause. For example, in Chrysler Motors Corp. v. International Union, supra, 959 F.2d 685, Chrysler asked the court to set aside an arbitrator’s order reinstating an employee discharged for sexual harassment. We acknowledged the public policy against workplace harassment reflected in both Title VII and the E.E.O.C.’s sexual harassment guidelines. Id. at 687-88. We also agreed that it would be appropriate for the court to set aside an arbitration award that clashed with this policy. “As with any contract, a court may not enforce an arbitrator’s interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement that is contrary to public *835policy.” Id. at 687. As it turned out, we were not convinced that the particular order under review in Chrysler did run afoul of public policy. The evidence before the arbitrator indicated that the harasser had only engaged in a single instance of misconduct and that he was never warned or otherwise disciplined prior to his discharge; the record also gave the arbitrator no cause to believe that he was incapable of rehabilitation. 959 F.2d at 688-89. Under those circumstances, we believed that the arbitrator’s order reinstating him was consistent both with the just cause provision of the collective bargaining agreement and with public policy. Id. at 689. What is implicit throughout our opinion, however, is that we would not hesitate to set aside an arbitrator’s order if, for example, it required the reinstatement of a recidivist harasser, a move that would jeopardize the rights of his co-workers and undermine the public interest in a harassment-free workplace. Our sister circuits have done just that. E.g., Newsday, Inc. v. Long Island Typographical Union, supra, 915 F.2d at 845; see also Stroehmann Bakeries, Inc. v. Local 776, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, supra, 969 F.2d at 1442.
The rights of Amos’ co-workers cannot be over-emphasized in this analysis, particularly in view of the rationale of TWA and Eckles. In each of those cases, the rights of other employees would have suffered had the plaintiff been given the accommodation he sought. Here the opposite is time. The women who worked around Amos had an undeniable interest in seeing Amos discharged as promptly as possible once it was clear that milder forms of discipline were ineffective in stopping his abhorrent behavior. On the other hand, allowing Amos to remain in the workplace until Ameritech believed it had a sure-fire case of just cause to fire him had the predictable consequence of subjecting more women to a hostile work environment.
These distinctions vanish today, however, as my colleagues articulate no limits on what types of collective bargaining agreement provisions trump an employer’s obligation to remediate discrimination. This is a troubling result, for both this and future cases. Never mind that Ameritech alone is responsible for the failure to comply with the contractual deadline in December 1992; and never mind that no arbitrator or court was ever invited to decide whether discharging Amos either then or in June of 1993 would have been appropriate notwithstanding the thirty-day and just cause provisions of the collective bargaining agreement. Having waited for years (and years) to get rid of Amos, Ameritech may now hold up the collective bargaining agreement as a fig leaf for its own inaction. I have no doubt that other unionized employers will follow suit.
6.
Even if the district court did err in excluding evidence as to the collective bargaining agreement and Ameritech’s fears of unfavorable arbitration, that error does not require us to overturn the jury’s verdict and put these parties to the expense of a new trial. Two quick points deserve making in that regard.
Overwhelming evidence supports the jury’s finding that Ameritech’s response to the harassment was negligent, and that the company was therefore liable for compensatory damages under Title VII. Indeed, the evidence here comes about as close as I have seen to a case for liability as a matter of law. At the outset of the relevant time period in November 1991, Ameritech knew that it had a dangerous employee on its hands. Amos had already harassed thirteen women by then and showed no signs of stopping. On the contrary, he went right on verbally harassing, touching, and rubbing his penis against his female co-workers. Yet, as I indicated above, Ameritech’s reaction continued to be half-hearted, bumbling, and wholly ineffective. The failure to effectuate Amos’ discharge in December 1992 within the time frame specified by the collective bargaining agreement is but another example of the company’s negligence. At the very least, the underlying verdict on liability should stand. To suggest that any reasonable jury would find Ameritech’s conduct *836non-negligent is, I must respectfully submit, preposterous.
The question of punitive damages might at first seem closer in view of the more culpable state of mind required for such damages. But one must bear in mind that Ameriteeh enjoyed the benefit of a jury instruction that toughened the E.E.O.C.’s burden of proof on punitive damages beyond what the law actually requires. Over the E.E.O.C.’s objection, the district court instructed the jury that the Commission must prove Ameritech’s reckless indifference by clear and convincing evidence. Tr. 1114-15,1378. Yet, a mere preponderance of the evidence is all that is necessary to support an award of punitive damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(l). Knowlton v. Tettrust Phones, Inc., 189 F.3d 1177, 1186 (10th Cir.1999); Stender v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 803 F.Supp. 259, 324 (N.D.Cal.1992); see generally Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 253, 109 S.Ct. 1775, 1792, 104 L.Ed.2d 268 (1989). The fact that the jury found the E.E.O.C.’s evidence compelling enough to meet even this heightened burden demonstrates just how strong the Commission’s case was.
In the series of Ameritech’s ineffective responses to Amos’ harassment, one has no difficulty detecting a reckless indifference to the plight of the company’s female workers. More than once the company responded to a complaint about Amos as if it were the first, failing to check his employment history, failing to ratchet up the discipline from that which had already been imposed previously, and, in December of 1992, failing to ensure that the time period in which disciplinary measures could be imposed would not be permitted to expire. Considering what the company knew as of November of 1991, it should have been on high alert from that point forward, prepared to deal with any and all complaints about Amos expeditiously and efficaciously. After it dropped the ball in December 1992, it should have been all the more at the ready to protect its other employees. Even so, three more complaints were required before Ameriteeh finally terminated Amos. The fact that it took the company nearly twenty years to bring the harassment to an end is telling in and of itself.

Twenty years!

I respectfully dissent.

. See, e.g., Tr. 627 ("Q. And meeting that 30 day time frame is essential, correct? A. Absolutely essential.”); 645-46 (”Q. Let me ask you this: Has there ever been an occasion, to your knowledge, where somebody had been terminated outside of the 30 day calendar day period prescribed by the contract? A. Not to my knowledge.... Q. Could you have suspended Mr. Amos pending investigation and disciplined him under the contract at that time? A. No. Q. Why not? A. Because the 30 day clock had come and gone.”); 779 ("Q. What did you hear from Joyce Leek? No action could be taken because of [the] 30 day time line? A. Right, exactly.”); 807 (“Q. Isn’t it a fact that any discipline cannot be done outside of 30 days? A. I now know that, but I may have not known that before. ..."); 1145-46 ("Q. Is there a rule in the collective bargaining agreement that says that the company cannot take any disciplinary action after 30 days from the incident? A. Yes. Q. Has the union ever consented to the waiver of that 30 day rule? A. Not that I'm aware of ... Q. And if the company missed that time line is it the union's position that the company is absolutely forbidden from taking any type of discipline? A. Right.”).

. Ameritech argues that Debbie Wentland's testimony triggered the, need for the arbitration evidence. Wentland testified that upon hearing the news that Ameritech would not discipline Amos because of the missed deadline, "I was very upset. I was hurt. It is just, I guess I was naive, because I felt like I had worked with the company for 14 years, and again,they had no respect for me, they didn’t care about my feelings. They were more concerned about Gary's rights than mine.” Tr. 280. Nowhere in Wentland’s expression of frustration, however, is there a suggestion that the company could have disregarded the contractual deadline. The direct testimony on that point is entirely to the contrary. See n. 1, supra. Indeed, when read in context, Went-land’s criticism was directed to the half-heart-ed and ineffective manner in which the company handled her complaint as well as those of the other women that Amos harassed. See Tr. 275-82, 284, 329-40.
Ameritech also points out that manager Darlene Olberding testified that she would have recommended the dismissal of Amos for Wentland’s complaint (Tr. 174) and again suggests that the exclusion of the arbitration evidence left the company unable to explain why Amos was not discharged. Ameritech Br. 34; Reply Br. 10. But Olberding herself acknowledged that the administrative "slip-up” precluded action .against Amos (Tr. 174); and she never suggested that the company had the power to ignore the collective bargaining agreement. The fact that she thought termination was the appropriate response was hardly remarkable in and of itself. After all, EEO coordinator Monica Sharp recommended that Amos be discharged (Tr. 776-77, 847). And Robert McFeely, the director of human resources for the five-state region served by Ameritech, himself testified that Amos would have been terminated but for the fact that the company missed the thirty-day deadline. Tr. 226.

. Ameritech suggests that had an arbitrator ordered Amos reinstated, he might also have ordered that Amos's record be wiped clean of any wrongdoing for purposes of future disciplinary proceedings. If indeed that was a realistic prospect, it demonstrates to me why it is imperative that we insist employers deal with repeat harassers decisively and resort to the courts if and when arbitrators render adverse decisions of the type that worried Amer-itech. I cannot imagine that a court would approve an arbitration award that mandates the expungement of an employee's record of sexual harassment and precludes an employer from retying on that record if and when .the harassment recurs. Yet, Ameritech’s line of defense postulates that the possibility of such a bad outcome in arbitration — even if it is one that a court would not sustain — is reason enough for an employer to delay terminating a serial harasser when it is reasonably clear that discharge is the only way to stop the harassment. In this respect, Amerilech's defense is doubly troublesome. It invites a jury to condone inaction for fear of an unfavorable outcome in arbitration, and at the same time, to the extent this line of thinking encourages an employer to avoid arbitration by refraining from decisive action, it deprives courts of the opportunity to correct the very types of misguided awards that Ameritech purports to have been concerned about.