Engineer Sues NBC, Claims Sex Discrimination

A female sound engineer with NBC News in Burbank filed a $10-million discriminationsuit against the network Wednesday, alleging that it has kept her and other women from becoming camera operators.

The civil complaint filed by Lee Serrie, a 12-year network employee, in Los Angeles Superior Court claims that “NBC-TV has no women camera operators working in any of their network facilities and they have only three women sound engineers in the nation.”

The network, according to Serrie’s attorney, has 30 camera operators at its facilities around the country.

“The fact they have no women in this position puts the burden on them (to prove) that they have not discriminated,” said attorney John Huerta. The National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund is serving as Huerta’s co-counsel.

NBC said it will not comment on the matter until it has had time to read a copy of the complaint, said Pat Schultz, a network manager of corporate information.

Huerta said alleged sexist statements made by network officials in response to Serrie’s promotion requests would also be at issue in the case.

Huerta said that in a March discussion with network officials he was told that camera equipment was too heavy “for a woman to schlep around. That’s why you don’t see women doing this job.”

But Serrie, who said in an interview that she weighs about 133 pounds and stands 5 feet 6, claimed that the weight issue was “absurd.”

As part of her job as a sound technician, she said, she regularly carries equipment as heavy as or heavier than a camera operator’s.

Serrie also claimed that for six years her superiors refused to discuss her promotion requests.

Serrie’s suit alleges that NBC has promoted males who were less qualified, had lesser skills, less experience and less education than Serrie, who claims she got her first experience as a camera operator 12 years ago at NBC-owned WNBC-TV in New York.

Huerta said in an interview that at least four men have been promoted or hired to the camera-operator position in recent years, but none of the available job openings were posted for the other employees to see.

“They use a ‘pattern and practice’ of filling camera-operator positions by recruiting word-of-mouth, by using an ‘old boys network,’ ” Huerta wrote in the complaint.