If you missed Part One of The Snyder Files, click here!
In going through the Congressional investigation into the Washington Commanders, the word “culture” comes up over and over again. In Daniel Snyder’s deposition, it was mentioned over 50 times. Brian Lafemina, the team’s former COO, brought it up 30 times. In February of this year, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a roundtable on “Examining the Washington Football Team’s Toxic Workplace Culture,” in which almost every accuser talked about the team’s “culture”:
Tiffani Johnston: “I am here today to tell you about the sexual advances by Dan Snyder and the constant unprofessionalism and ‘boys locker room’ culture that started at the top with Dan Snyder and continued down the line with all of Dan Snyder’s Senior Team.”
Rachel Engleson: “I worked at the Washington Football Team for 8 years, and I cannot recall a time that I didn’t experience or fear sexual harassment. It was a pervasive part of the culture, an unavoidable rite of passage of being a woman who worked there.”
Melanie Coburn: “The culture and environment in those offices was deplorable, like a frat party run by a billionaire who knew no boundaries.”
Ana Nunez: “I sat in his office, told him the stories, saw him write in his notebook, and accepted the tissues he offered me when I became emotionally overwhelmed that someone might finally do something to change the workplace culture. But I was wrong. Nothing came from me telling him what I had gone through.”
Brad Baker: “I felt like if we all spoke up, told the truth, and believed in the process that we could make a positive impact and inspire some change in workplace cultures all over the country, especially in the world of Sports.”
So forgive me if I’m being a little pedantic when I ask: What does this word really mean? What are people trying to say when they use this word “culture” to describe a workplace?
One answer that emerges in the hundreds of pages of testimony, I think, is that “culture” is about the unwritten rules of a workplace, which often supersede the official rules. Culture is when you just know what you’re supposed to do, without necessarily having to be told.
Take this example, from the testimony of David Pauken, another former Washington COO. This is his response to a question about what he would have done had he learned that Dan Snyder’s behavior was making employees uncomfortable:
“There was no avenue to confront Dan on that, where he’s going to change how he’s going to interact. And I knew that to be true. And to go into his office and make a pleading would not – it would not be a good outcome, so I didn’t attempt it. And I had enough interactions with Dan to know that told me that was not going to be a viable strategy. He operated and managed the way that he did, and that was how it was going to be.”
Notice that Pauken is not repeating a specific story about confronting Dan and not getting a good outcome; he’s saying that he didn’t even attempt it because he knew how it would go. That is “culture” at work.
When the issue is sexual harassment, as it is in this investigation of Snyder and the Commanders, culture becomes so important because the issues can become routine. Multiple women told the committee that they were subject to harassment every day they worked there.
Emily Applegate: “On a daily basis, I was sexually harassed by my direct boss, the Chief Marketing Officer of the team. Every day I was forced into uncomfortable conversations about my body and about my appearance. I was told to wear tight outfits to events so clients had something to look at. I was asked invasive questions about my dating life, specifically if I was interested in older men since my boss was significantly older than me.”
Ana Nunez: “During my time with the Team, I was sexually harassed by multiple male employees, including top executives. Often, these male employees had a reputation for mistreating young, female employees. Everyone knew about their mistreatment and even saw it happening, but no one did anything about it. When I became a victim, and I tried to report it, no one did anything about it. I won’t describe every instance of sexual harassment I experienced during my time there because it was almost a part of my everyday experience, but I want to share some examples that really stuck with me and that have greatly affected me.”
These stories help illustrate why problems that are “cultural” are so hard to fix in capitalist institutions. Because our normal method of dealing with problems in a workplace — firing the bad actors — doesn’t work for a bad culture. The problem here isn’t that anyone did anything unacceptable; the problem is what is considered acceptable in the first place.
Last year, when I wrote about “toxic workplaces,” I highlighted the way these exposés often seem to be desperately looking for some “smoking gun” — some example of behavior so offensive and beyond the pale that everyone agrees it is unacceptable. And we’ve seen that here, both in the reporting by the Washington Post and this Congressional investigation. There has been a lot of focus on the most galling details, like the secret “Good Bits” video of revealing prurient outtakes from a cheerleader calendar photo shoot, or the time Snyder allegedly pressured an employee to get in his car.
But when the problem is a culture, the focus on such incidents is misplaced. For one, they are generally symptoms of a problem that is both more mundane and harder to deal with. After all, Snyder’s defense against the more extreme allegations has been consistent and simple: He either denies he knew about them (like the video) or denies they happened in the first place (like the car incident). Then he places the blame on people he has already fired, like former team president Bruce Allen. None of this addresses the “culture” problem.
Since culture is often a matter of the unwritten rules governing a workplace, the best way to fix the culture is to replace those rules with objective, written rules that are evenly enforced. But doing this requires taking power away from owners and bosses like Snyder, who like being able to selectively enforce rules only when it is convenient for them, or only against people they don’t like. For example, on multiple occasions the team uncovered examples of workers violating rules against the employee relationships — only to fire the woman involved but retain the man.
And then there was Snyder’s treatment of Larry Michael, the “voice of the team” who was also notorious for his abusive treatment of women. Brian Lafemina testified that when he told Snyder about allegations against Michael, Snyder was dismissive:
Q: Now, in response to what you told Mr. Snyder, do you recall what he said?
A: Yeah. He said that Larry was a sweetheart and that Larry wouldn’t hurt anybody.
Q: Did he say anything else?
A: Not that I recall.
Q: What was your reaction to Mr. Snyder’s statements?
A: I don’t know if I had a reaction necessarily. It was obvious that he was fond of Larry and that he thought that Larry was well-intentioned and that he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Larry.
Q: And when you say that he didn't want anything bad to happen – he wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Larry, what do you mean by that?
A: Either reputational damage, this becoming public, embarrassment, and the like.
When I read stuff like this, it’s hard not to see owners as essentially dictators. Like dictators, they make the rules up as they go and force subordinates to read between the lines as to what they really want (“It was obvious that he was fond of Larry… he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Larry.”); like dictators, their approval is more important than the facts (“He said that Larry was a sweetheart and that Larry wouldn’t hurt anybody.”). And like dictators, they use their absolute power to shape the culture.
If you want to fix the culture, then you have to remove the dictator — and it’s not enough to simply replace him with a new one. As reprehensible as Dan Snyder is, these problems are not unique to him or the Washington Football Team. Any time a boss has such power, these abuses are possible. In order to prevent them, we must end the absolute power of bosses, of the capitalist class.