Sara Saidman was 21 years old and only months out of college when she started her dream job in May 2016 as a field engineer with Schlumberger Technology Corp., working on an oil rig in West Texas.
Within weeks of being on the job, Saidman was “objectified, assaulted, groped, threatened, retaliated against, and exposed to physical danger by her colleagues on oil rigs,” according to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Houston.
The 40-page complaint, which seeks to be certified as a class action lawsuit, claims that Houston-based oil field services giant violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and seeks $100 million in damages.
Michael Palmer, a New York lawyer who specializes in workplace discrimination cases and one of the attorneys representing Saidman in the case, said his law firm is talking with several current and former Schlumberger employees who may join the litigation.
“We have done extensive research and investigation into this, and we are confident that this is a problem throughout the industry,” he said.
The constant sexual harassment that Saidman faced was “horrific,” Palmer said, but “even more shocking” was Schlumberger officials’ reaction to Saidman’s complaints when she reported them to the company’s human resources department.
“Company officials did nothing to stop the sexual harassment,” Palmer said in an interview with The Texas Lawbook. “Instead, they put the burden on the victim. This problem starts at the top, where 13 of the 14 top leaders of the company are male.”
“The purpose of this lawsuit is to bring out change in this industry,” he said.
The Texas Lawbook contacted Schlumberger officials seeking comment. Schlumberger’s North America Communications Manager, Lisa Ann Hofmann, responded by email: “We have not been served with the lawsuit you reference.”
In 2018, a woman engineer filed a lawsuit in Harris County against Schlumberger, Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling and BHP Billiton Petroleum claiming that a male employee secretly tape recorded her in her bedroom on an oil rig. The Texas Lawbook reached out to the lawyers involved in that case about the status of the litigation, but have not received a response.
Saidman’s lawsuit states that 95% of Schlumberger’s employees on the rigs are men.
“In Schlumberger’s playbook, oil rigs and women do not mix,” the lawsuit states. “The few women who are hired face a terrorizing environment where men discriminate against their female colleagues with impunity. Schlumberger has knowingly permitted male workers to treat women who work on oil rigs as sex objects and second-class citizens.”
The complaint argues that Schlumberger “intentionally turns a blind eye to the pattern” of illegal conducted by its male oil rig employees.
“Women who have the courage to seek recourse, including Ms. Saidman, are promptly blacklisted by human resources and management personnel,” the lawsuit states. “Schlumberger makes it nearly impossible for women who have been sexually harassed to find recourse.”
The company’s formal policies instruct employees who have been harassed to “politely” confront the harassers themselves before seeking assistance from management, Palmer said.
“On the rare occasions when a complaint is deemed worthy of a response, Schlumberger dismisses them as ‘just oil field talk’ or ‘a joke.’ The women who complain are then retaliated against as punishment,” the lawsuit states. “As one former employee warned, ‘[Human Resources] is not your friend at this company, they are your enemy.’”
Saidman graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and minor in petroleum engineering and chemistry. In May 2016, Saidman began her stint at Schlumberger as a measurements-while-drilling field engineer. During her one year of employment, she worked on rigs in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma.
In her capacity as an MWD, Saidman assembled the drill tool and monitored it for drilling malfunctions. She also watched for and reported changes in pressure, torque, slipstick, drilling angles, depth and direction, and other drilling data.
The lawsuit states that Saidman was an instrumental part of a team that broke a Schlumberger record for fastest drilling time using a specific tool. In January 2017, she received a positive performance review and was promoted after just eight months on the job.
Despite her excellent job performance, according to the federal complaint, Saidman was “subjected to rampant discrimination and sexual harassment.”
The lawsuit states that she was “forced to share both a trailer and her bedroom (neither of which had locks on the doors) with three of her male colleagues.”
According to federal court documents, several of Saidman’s male colleagues “encouraged the other men who worked on the rig to break into Saidman’s room at night and ignore her if she did not consent to sexual activity, assuring them that ‘she likes it whether or not she wants it’ and ‘the more she screams, the more she wants it.’
“Ms. Saidman’s male colleagues referred to her by demeaning and offensive terms, such as ‘cunt,’ ‘bitch,’ and ‘slut,’ and made inappropriate comments about her physical appearance,” the lawsuit states.
When Saidman complained to superiors, the complaint states that she was initially suspended without pay and then fired in May 2017.
“Saidman was repeatedly advised against reporting her experiences to Schlumberger and told to ‘get over herself,’ ‘learn to deal with it,’ and ‘not make a fuss’ because seeking redress from the company would ‘backfire’ on her and ‘torpedo’ her career,” the lawsuit states.
“[Saidman] quickly learned that it was common knowledge that opposing sexual discrimination on rigs would irreparably damage or end a woman’s career with the company,” complaint states. “And this anti-woman animus does not exist in a vacuum: women working on Schlumberger oil rigs nationwide have reported a hostile work environment in which pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination is standard operating procedure.”
Palmer, a partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp, and associate Nicole Wiitala are lead counsel for Saidman. Houston lawyers Todd Slobin and Melinda Arbuckle of Shellist Lazarz Slobin are Texas counsel for Saidman.
The law firm representing Schlumberger in the litigation is not yet known, but Jackson Lewis has represented the company previously on employment discrimination matters.