2 | SOLAR ENTERPRISE December 18, 2017 | VOL. 53, No. 51
11 | STILL GROWING AT 175
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Mayor: No going back in fast-growing Stamford BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
employer and try to work out some kind of deal that really only protects the predator .” By those agreements, said Gillibrand, employees are forbidden from talking about what happened and are expected to “keep doing their job as if nothing happened to them .” “No worker should have to put up with such an unfair system,” she said . Proponents say the legislation would allow survivors of sexual harassment or discrimination to seek justice, discuss their cases publicly and eliminate institutional protection for harassers . “I like having options,” said Anne M . Janiak, CEO of the Women's Enterprise Development Center Inc . in White Plains . “I like having women not being forced to do something one way in order to get a result . I think (the legislation) is a good thing, but whether it’s going to change » HARASSMENT, page 6
» STAMFORD , page 6
Equine Moves See story on page 9
Ryan Petronelli, shown here with boarder Claiborne, has expanded his equestrian business to Ridgefield. Photo by Phil Hall.
Sexual harassment at work: litigate or arbitrate BY ALEESIA FORNI aforni@westfairinc.com
A
bipartisan coalition in Congress is taking aim at corporate agreements that it says silence victims of sexual assault . U .S . Sen . Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat, and U .S . Rep . Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from Illinois, this month announced the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2017, legislation that would prevent
employers from holding employees to forced arbitration agreements to settle “a sex discrimination dispute .” According to the lawmakers, an estimated 60 million Americans are subject to forced arbitration clauses, which require employees to settle disputes with their employers through an arbitration process . “When a company has a forced arbitration policy, it means that if a worker is sexually harassed or sexually assaulted in the workplace, they are not allowed to go to court over it,” Gillibrand said . “Instead, they have to go into a secret meeting with their
E
ven after a decisive re-election victory in November, Stamford Mayor David Martin gives the impression that some of the charges flung his way during the campaign still smart . “There was, and still is, a lot of talk about Stamford being ‘overdeveloped’,” he said in his Stamford Government Center office on Washington Boulevard . Anyone taking such a stance is either “extremely naïve,” trying to score political points “or is just plain wrong,” he said . Indeed, development was one of the key issues raised by Martin’s Republican opponent Barry Michelson, who during the campaign repeatedly alleged that the administration was bending over backwards to allow developers to run riot over zoning laws, resulting in increased traffic congestion and overcrowded streets . Although Martin won by nearly 24 percentage points, such talk has continued, to the mayor’s annoyance . “Look, we’ve had explosive (population) growth here and companies want to come here,” Martin said . “It’s all about quality of life . And I’d rather have companies and people wanting to move to Stamford than turn back the clock to where it was 20 or 25 years ago .” Back then, the mayor said, downtown was in effect a ghost town . This December, however, “We had huge crowds of families come into downtown for the Christmas tree lighting with Santa Claus . Fifteen years ago, that was all brownfields and nobody would have been caught going there .” The city is growing faster than the rest of the state, according to a January study by The Yankee Institute, which reported that Stamford’s population had grown 5 .1 percent over the past year, while the