“Thyssenkrupp, where female colleagues are humiliated. What would you do?” On June 3, a thread appeared on Reddit in which a user named Ithinkso12 wrote about working at Thyssenkrupp’s engineering development center, where cases of “harassment, discrimination and harassment” are frequent. He cited several specific examples that he claimed happened to him or other coworkers.
- “There is no more room at the meeting, the girl would go out to get an extra chair. Manager: no need, you can sit on my face.”
- “A male colleague takes a photo of a female colleague in a short skirt in the office and shows the other colleagues in a disgusting way that she should be fucked.”
- “A girl arrives for a meeting, the manager says: oh well, you’re here for decoration.”
Under the post, several comments were published in which users shared their similar experiences, so we contacted the author of the initial post the next day, but he said that he did not want to comment because the number of messages was taking a toll on him mentally. However, he trusts that the company management will finally take the right steps as a result of the thread.
In the meantime, we sent questions to Thyssenkrupp’s headquarters in Hungary. Ten days later, they indicated in a statement that they take all suspicions very seriously, created an interdisciplinary working group, and an external professional consultant is also involved in the ongoing investigation. Also, they wrote that their company rejects “any form of discrimination, sexual harassment, gender discrimination or abuse”, so they take steps to prevent them in many areas, for example, they have a reporting platform.
In the end, we didn’t report on the accusations against Thyssenkrupp on Telex, Ithinkso12, who this time introduced herself as Szandra, however, contacted us in the past few days saying that more than three months after writing her post, there had been no substantial development.
“It’s frustrating that apparently they still don’t understand the problem, why it’s not funny when a man tells a woman why she came to the meeting as a decoration, or that you sit on my face. And how humiliating that is.”
Macho inner circle, gaslighting and bullying
Thyssenkrupp is a key player in German industry, the Hungarian subsidiary of the company was founded in 1999, and deals with the development of electric steering systems for passenger cars. Several commenters on Reddit wrote about having previously worked in Thyssenkrupp’s Budapest office, some of them reported incompetent and toxic managers, others highlighted the company’s “macho, inner circle”, and someone wrote: “one of the steepest after the case, they did take a small step forward, including compensation, but unfortunately it did not cover my therapy.”
We spoke on the phone with the user who called the company “infectious”. He joined the accounting department of Thyssenkrupp’s Budapest office as a 19-year-old student worker, where he worked for a year and a half. He was not bullied, but he also experienced humiliation and a toxic workplace atmosphere. “They spoke to us very condescendingly and regularly gaslighted me: while they didn’t assign me a task despite my request, they scolded me for not working. Every morning, the seniors told the current company gossip to the students, talking about everyone behind their backs. Nepotism is also terrible, a good number of middle managers are someone’s friend or family member, they are usually in an exceptional position and can afford things that others wouldn’t dare.”
Many cases were reported to HR even before the investigation
The Reddit post eventually caused such a stir that the Hungarian management of the company announced that an investigation had been launched, and then a German committee came to the Budapest office, and according to Szandra, it seemed that they really took the matter seriously. “I was also interviewed, two German HR professionals and an external Hungarian lawyer were present. I recounted several specific cases, named persons and witnesses, and presented written evidence. You could see they were quite shocked.”
In the office where the investigation took place, according to Szandra, the women took turns, dozens of them complained. But even after two months, they only received one email asking for their patience. Szandra says that this is strange, since many cases have already been reported by female employees, and it is hard to believe that the management did not know about anything until now.
After her post, Szandra received messages from several women who wrote about their negative experiences at the company, but she also knew of many colleagues from before who reported to their superiors that they had been harassed or humiliated by a colleague, in the best case they were transferred to another department, in the worst case they were advised to stop. Szandra also reported cases to HR several times, but apart from suggesting that she should not come in short clothes next time, no action was taken.
“Problems were downplayed, HR’s reaction was usually that men are like that. They left us completely alone. Before company events, the girls gave each other advice on how to get out of the situation when drunken male colleagues start grabbing us.”
There were people who wrote to Sandra about how they only went for a job interview at the company, but they already felt uncomfortable there after the men inside threw obscene words after a few minutes and asked her about things like how much they like to party or if they have plans child.
The husband of a female employee also contacted Sandra on Reddit, and he has now told us their story. He said his wife’s boss obtained the woman’s sick leave papers, from which he learned that she was pregnant at risk. “After that, he trumpeted the news throughout the office, blamed my wife for everything, and asked her in an email why she didn’t tell me at least half a year earlier that she wanted a child. This boss no longer works for the company, but his colleague who grabbed my wife’s bottom at the Christmas party does.”
Just like in the BME freshman camps
Szandra emphasizes that only a few dozen employees out of the thousand-person company, primarily the middle and top managers, maintain this toxic atmosphere, but they, in turn, affect the organizational culture of the entire company.
“Men who don’t fit into this macho culture and try to protect women are laughed at or booed. Those who like this style, on the other hand, say it’s great, it’s like we’re still in college now.”
That is why he anxiously read the news about this year’s BME freshman camps, he says that the pattern of the cases there is very similar to the humiliations that happened at his workplace. Which, according to him, is no accident, since his colleagues have been socializing in the same BME freshman camps for ten or twenty years. “The company’s domestic subsidiary started as a small business, in which boys who had just graduated from the technical university created the organizational culture themselves. Many of them still work here.”
From this point of view, according to him, the problem of sexism goes far beyond Thyssenkrupp, because he finds that the shaming of women is still common in the engineering profession. “A couple of years ago, I was at an engineering conference, where the head of one of the IT companies came up to me and handed me a gift box. When I tried to take it, he pulled it away, and then repeated this a few more times. He and his colleagues had a good laugh about it.”
After her post, Sandra received several threatening messages on Reddit, in which they wrote that they would find out who she was anyway and “she would be fired.” He says he’s not afraid of that, he’ll probably leave the company soon anyway. Rather, she is afraid that women who go home from work crying will continue to be disbelieved.
As in June, we sent our questions to thyssenkrupp Components Technology Hungary about: exactly what kind of investigation was launched in relation to the complaints circulating on Reddit and how many complaints were received; have there been concrete consequences of the complaints in the last three months; as well as whether similar complaints previously reported to the company’s HR department were investigated? The communication manager of the company again replied that the investigation is still ongoing and that he expects it to be concluded soon, but this time we did not receive any more specific information.
As soon as the company sends the results of the investigation, we will report on that as well.
