![]() ![]() “Psychologists who have studied abuse, say, a husband who’s abusing his wife, they find when that goes unchecked, it often extends to abusing the children. ![]() “I’m not surprised,” she said, resignedly. While Martens continues her appeal to ever-higher courts for a jury trial, she takes some cold comfort in the dirty laundry being aired about Wall Street’s conflicts of interest and unfair allocations of initial public offerings. “I have Cuneo’s voice on tape and this is what he says, ‘I should f- her with a watered elephant’s d-.’ This is the man Citigroup officials insist is not vulgar and is a nice man.” “The reason I am still fighting for a jury trial is that I want a jury to hear the tape I have,” Martens said. After all, she had all the right qualities: intelligence, a willingness to work hard and a great rapport with people. Martens always knew she would be a success. It’s been a hell of a ride for Martens, who grew up in a poor coal-mining town in Appalachia, where she never imagined becoming a defender of the Constitution. ![]() If you let Wall Street redefine our Constitution, I fear there will be no limit to the rights they try to take away.” “If you let them chip away at our rights, there won’t be any rights left. “I want to vindicate the Bill of Rights,” Martens said in an exclusive interview with The Post, which has aggressively covered the twists and turns of her battles with Citigroup and the legal system for more than 10 years. The reason Martens keeps fighting, as she explains it, no longer has anything to do with her own specific allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination, little to do with Citigroup and everything to do with basic American freedoms. To this day, the company insists that Cuneo was a good manager. Cuneo allegedly told associates that if Martens hurt his career, he would “snap her neck.” By that time, she had received rape threats and death threats. Ten months after she hired the lawyer and aired her complaints publicly, Martens was fired. She was also awarded smaller bonuses than the men and was regularly left out of golf outings and other opportunities to drum up new business from wealthy clientele. Even when Martens graduated from the training program and started working as a broker, her most lucrative clients were regularly taken away from her and reassigned to male brokers on the staff. She has testified that men in the same class made $30,000. When Martens started off in the broker-training program in 1985, she was paid $24,000 per year. The women took home lower salaries than the men, even for the same work. The women were regularly groped when they passed by the men, especially in the “Boom-Boom Room,” a basement office made over to celebrate happy hour, complete with alcoholic drinks and – sometimes – paid strippers. Here’s what she said: She and other women in her office were regularly referred to by their male co-workers as “whores,” “tramps” and “bitches.” She coped by simply closing her office door and concentrating on her work.īut nine years later, as the frat-house atmosphere of the office just got too much to take, she decided to complain – first internally and then by hiring a lawyer. She thought nothing of it she was excited about the new job.Īlmost immediately, Martens realized that her boss, Nick Cuneo, was crude and favored male employees. Like all other new employees, she signed a document mandating arbitration rather than jury trial for any complaints she might develop against the firm. Martens decided to become a broker and in 1985 took a job in New York with Shearson Lehman, which later became part of Smith Barney. The story is told in a just-published book, “Tales from the Boom-Boom Room,” by Bloomberg News reporter Susan Antilla. Now, at a time when most of the other 2,000 women who eventually joined her nationwide suit have settled, gotten their financial payoff and moved on with their lives, Martens continues the fight. She and Judith Mione were lead plaintiffs in the shocking class-action suit that has already cost Smith Barney’s parent, Citigroup, hundreds of millions of dollars. She was the woman to whom hundreds of other women turned to cry their tales of woe. She was the first woman to complain, the first to hire a lawyer, the first to file a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. ![]() When news of raunchy grope sessions in Smith Barney’s infamous “Boom-Boom Room” first made headlines six years ago, it was all because of Pam Martens. ![]()
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