The sexual harassment scandal involving the Dallas Mavericks and others that have arisen over the last year has the Dallas Cowboys more sensitive and attuned to workplace culture, owner Jerry Jones said.
"We all need to be very attuned and sensitive to fairness in the workplace," Jones said. "So, to any end that we need to give it more thought, we should and are just simply because of the reminder all over this country that we need to really use our energy and we ought to use our assets to be very equal and fair in the workplace. ... I want to be real clear I'm not commenting about the Mavericks in any way."
The Mavericks were forced to hire former AT&T executive Cynthia Marshall as CEO to restructure its workplace environment after a Sports Illustrated article shed light on a bizarre culture of alleged sexual harassment that has festered in the business operations of the NBA franchise, dating back to before the time that owner Mark Cuban purchased the team.
Jones reiterated that his comments have nothing to do with the Mavericks but because of the changing times have forced people to be more sensitive to issues than they were in the past regarding a lot of things. He offered a personal story relating his father's business being affected by Japanese American being put concentrations camps during World War II.
"Just in general, you see that these are areas that we should, like so many things, we should have been looking at them more sensitively 20 years ago," Jones said. "We should have been looking at them more sensitively 40 years ago, 10 years ago. They are so many things that we look at differently. My father, we got our start because he was working in aircraft plants in Los Angeles. And he was about 20, 21. The workers that worked in the greenhouses grew poinsettias for the soldiers at Christmas time. Those workers were of Japanese descent and they were all put in concentration camps, the Japanese-Americans. And so my father took over those greenhouses because we made that mistake and put them in concentration camps because we were at war with Japan. That, plus many other things that happen, make you more sensitive about a lot of areas and that's an example of what happens. You look at some things on gun control. It just takes some of the most awful things that you could ever imagine that cause you to pay more attention."
