Internal CTA emails obtained by the Tribune reveal a workplace culture often blatantly demeaning to women, including a high-level official engaged in alleged sexual harassment of female employees and other misconduct.
In one case, the official and another male employee swapped digital messages crudely commenting about a female colleague’s appearance even as they met with her.
After the Tribune showed a sampling of the hundreds of documents to CTA President Dorval Carter Jr., agency officials confronted David Kowalski, the CTA’s senior safety adviser. Carter said Kowalski admitted to writing the emails and “expressed remorse.”
On Friday, Kowalski resigned his $200,000-a-year job at Carter’s request. Kowalski, 62, a nationally recognized transit expert, had worked at the CTA for more than 40 years and was scheduled to retire Dec. 31, officials said. He did not return a phone call or an email from the Tribune.
“I was surprised and certainly disturbed by what I read in the emails,” said Carter, who has known Kowalski since the 1980s. Carter later left the CTA to work for the federal government on transportation issues, returning as CTA president in May. The emails that led to Kowalski’s hasty exit occurred before Carter’s watch.
Carter acknowledged in a Friday interview at CTA headquarters that his agency’s workplace culture needs a major overhaul.
“Clearly that type of behavior isn’t something that I believe is appropriate in the workplace, or anywhere else for that matter. I was totally shocked, to be quite honest with you, that Dave Kowalski would be engaged in that kind of behavior,” Carter said.
Although Kowalski was allowed to resign, his emails would be cause for termination under CTA work and ethics policies, officials said. A still ongoing review has determined that Kowalski violated rules pertaining to conduct unbecoming an employee, abuse of company time and failure to exercise best judgment, CTA spokesman Brian Steele said. CTA policy also prohibits employees from using CTA electronic equipment for transmitting offensive material to or about others, Steele said.
The emails, covering the period of 2008 to 2012, contain:
*Sexually explicit back-and-forth dialogue between Kowalski and two women, one of whom now says she was coerced and feared retribution.
*Brash email exchanges between Kowalski and another high-ranking male employee during CTA meetings that refer to female body parts as “hams” and “walnuts.”
*Abundant references to consuming alcohol, even suggesting that some of the drinking occurred on CTA time.
*Braggadocio about using out-of-town trips to transit conventions and other events as opportunities for “slacker time.”
In one email exchange, male CTA executives, at least one who is still at the agency, surreptitiously discuss female colleagues while meeting with them.
“Tunnel woman is showing you lots of prime ham red,” Kowalski emailed to a director in the rail maintenance division on May 13, 2011, under the subject line “Meeting.”
“Can you have the a/c shut off so she takes her jacket off,” responded the director, who retired last year.
In reference to another woman at the meeting, Kowalski told his cohort: “Your gal has been pumping those hams. Check it out.”
On Sept. 24, 2009, Kowalski, who was based in Rosemont as the CTA’s director of rail maintenance, made plans with a female employee to have breakfast and go driving around Lake Forest to look at the beautiful houses.
“You pick the route — I am game,” the employee wrote in a CTA email to Kowalski.
“Always had a soft spot for the north shore,” Kowalski responded. “From there we can wing it depending on how much time you have. I’m sure there will be alcohol involved in our adventure along with whatever else comes up to do.”
The employee, who no longer works at the CTA, said, “I would love to be driven!” Kowalski responded: “My pleasure. That will free up your hands.”
Dozens of Kowalski’s email exchanges obtained by the Tribune involved a female employee who is currently in a senior manager position that pays almost $100,000 annually.
The woman, who has worked at the CTA for more than a decade, responded to an email from Kowalski on March 14, 2011, asking if he shared a room with anybody on a just-completed business trip to Washington. She also asked whether Kowalski was planning to visit the CTA facility where she worked. “I got cupcakes,” she wrote.
“Got a king bed and was waiting for you. Got stood up. (What else is new huh?),” Kowalski emailed back. “What else you got besides cupcakes, hmmmm?”
“Tight pants…. LOL,” the woman said. She followed up with an email that added: “Heels too! cupcakes got liquour.” It prompted Kowalski to respond, “You’re sayin all the right things. Liquor will have to be done after work so it can be enjoyed fully.”
The Tribune is not identifying the woman because she said she went along with emails because she feared workplace retaliation, and no action has been taken against her by the CTA. Her participation in the emails is under review, said Steele, the CTA spokesman.
She told the Tribune on Friday that she was afraid that not going along with Kowalski’s inappropriate emails would hurt her CTA career, although she said she eventually put a stop to it.
“I remember the exchanges. It’s embarrassing. (But) how do you deal with this kind of situation when it’s somebody in authority?” she said tearfully in a phone interview.
“It was really hard to figure out how not to get backlashed or to get retaliation. It is a harsh culture at CTA, especially for females. I still am an employee here and I don’t know what the retaliation would be for me,” she said, adding that she decided early on against filing a complaint with the CTA or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
CTA management is dominated by males, officials said, although women hold many top agency positions, including deputy chief of staff, general counsel and chief planning officer.
But away from CTA headquarters in the Loop, in bus garages and at other facilities where most of the agency’s more than 9,000 employees report to work, sexual harassment is a common threat, some workers say.
A female bus driver recently contacted the Tribune complaining that a male bus driver started verbally harassing her and that it escalated to physical contact at the Kedzie garage. She said she complained, but it went nowhere and that she soon became the victim of “gang-mobbing” threats from others warning her to keep quiet.
Steele said that any time the CTA is made aware of allegedly inappropriate conduct, “we investigate fully no matter what employee or position is involved.” He said when the CTA has confirmed reports, the agency has imposed discipline “up to and including termination.”
Since October 2013, the CTA has received 21 harassment complaints involving employees, seven of which resulted in disciplinary action, including one termination, Steele said.
The CTA has an independent unit that allows employees to confidentially report issues or concerns. Carter said he plans to conduct employee surveys soon to get an accurate understanding of what many CTA employees describe as low morale and an “old boys’ club” attitude pervasive across the agency.
In October, the CTA rolled out an anti-harassment campaign directed at urging riders to report incidents, and the agency created a training video for CTA personnel intended to remind employees about unacceptable behavior and to encourage them to report it.
“I’ve made it a point of getting out on the system and meeting with employees and talking to them about CTA and what we’re doing,” Carter said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that everybody is happy with the culture of CTA right now. I recognize that.
“One of the reasons why I have been putting in the leadership team that I am developing here is that I recognize there is an opportunity for us to move CTA forward in a very positive way and address the cultural concerns that exist,” he said.
“I want our employees to feel valued as employees of CTA,” Carter said.
Carter recently hired Robert L. Smith, who ran bus operations at the CTA from 1998 to 2002, into the job of chief transit operations officer, the position that Kowalski held before he was moved this year to senior adviser on safety. Smith’s last job was administrator of the Maryland Transit Administration in Baltimore, where he served over two separate periods beginning in 2002.
“My new leadership team, particularly Robert Smith, has the same management style and vision that I have for how we should be handling our agency,” Carter said.
Kowalski has planned to retire for about the last five years, but he was persuaded by the last two CTA presidents under Mayor Rahm Emanuel — Forrest Claypool and Carter — to stay on longer, Steele said.
“Mr. Kowalski is a nationally respected operations executive. His knowledge and expertise is so invaluable to CTA,” Steele said before the controversial emails were disclosed to the CTA.
In another email exchange between Kowalski and a rail manager in 2010 about expenses associated with the CTA Holiday Train, where families bring their children to be photographed with Santa, the two men discussed the option of staffing fewer elves in the rail cars. The elves, who are CTA employees, are intended to serve a safety function as well as being festive characters.
Kowalski then described a female member of the CTA media relations team as being “beyond words.”
The manager shot back an email: “We could offer giving up one elf per car if (the CTA media person) puts on an elf costume.”
“Will need to remove some seats in her car and install a pole. Bingo,” Kowalski said. The emails continued, with Kowalski suggesting that he could start a collection to buy the woman her costume at “Lovers Lane or Fredricks.”
In other emails, Kowalski bragged that his position as a past chairman of various committees of the American Public Transportation Association permitted him “slacker time” during APTA conventions held around the country. “Will see how this plays out in Dallas in the fall,” he wrote.
During the weeklong Chicago rail event Kowalski emailed the woman who spoke to the Tribune: “Hop a train down for a drink and a quickie.”
“Don’t tempt the little devil inside me,” she replied.
Twitter @jhilkevitch
