Employment

We all know it can be hard to come back to work after a long weekend. For those of you fighting for women’s equality, here are 10 reasons to roll up your sleeves on the Tuesday after Labor Day: Read more »

Here’s a little story about an inspiring group of workers to help jumpstart your week after the long Labor Day weekend.

Last week I spoke with folks from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – an awe-inspiring group making extraordinary progress on behalf of tomato pickers in Florida. Here is what I learned:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) have brought together 11 of the major food retailers that buy tomatoes to agree that they will only buy from growers who sign a Fair Food Code of Conduct that includes complying with health & safety, wage and hour, sexual harassment and other labor and employment laws, and in many cases that they will adhere to standards beyond what the law requires. This put pressure on the growers to sign the Fair Food Agreement, and in 2010, 90% of Florida’s tomato growers joined the program. Participating tomato growers show a video to tomato pickers when they are hired that explains their rights under the agreement, and workers can call a 24-hour complaint hotline when their rights are violated! Read more »

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the monthly jobs data for July today and the numbers tell the story of a recovery that is just too slow.

There was good news in July as adult women’s unemployment rate matched its recovery-era low at 6.5 percent. However, this rate is still 1.5 times as high as the unemployment rate for adult women when the recession began in December 2007. Additionally – adult African-American women, adult Hispanic women, and single moms all still have unemployment rates several percentage points above this level.

July also proved to be a less-than-impressive month on the jobs front. The economy added 162,000 jobs in July, 117,000 of which were gained by women. However, adding 162,000 jobs each month is far below what we need to get back to pre-recession employment levels including absorbing the growth in the population. In fact, here’s a (sad) fact for the day: at this pace, it will take nearly 11 years, until 2024, to close the jobs gap, according to estimates by the Hamilton Project. Read more »

As a young woman looking for a career after college, I know that the playing field is still far from level for women in the workplace. We’re subject to a stubborn wage gap between men and women doing equivalent jobs; persistent occupational segregation of women into low-paying jobs; an inadequate federal minimum and tipped minimum wage, which is hardest on women since we make up two-thirds of those paid the minimum wage or less; and sexual harassment. And this week I learned another troubling statistic: managers are more likely to grant higher-status male employees’ requests for flexible work schedules than they are to grant requests from equivalent female employees. Read more »

As the single mother of two young children, Losia Nyankale’s job is what keeps her family afloat. But between earning low wages and having no paid sick days, Losia is just one child care emergency away from losing her job. This pressure made it difficult for Losia to care for her mother when she suffered a stroke, and it forced Losia to return to work immediately after the birth of her second child—despite her doctor’s orders. Losia works long hours to be able to afford her basic living expenses and child care. And she often finds herself in an all-too familiar bind: if she picks up more shifts to earn a better living, the child care costs that she can barely afford now will rise, and she’ll have even less time with her family. Losia would like to go back to school to improve her situation, but the combination of low wages, lack of paid sick days, and lack of affordable child care, keep that dream from coming true for now.

For many years Teresa worked on call as a banquet server and had an extremely difficult time arranging child care at the last minute for her children because of her unpredictable schedule. She found herself turning down jobs or quitting jobs where she wasn’t able to arrange child care, even though she needed the income badly. Like Losia, Teresa was a single mom who often didn’t earn enough money to pay for care. Read more »

Something may be rotten at Performance Food Group. 

This week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced a major lawsuit against a national food distributor for pattern or practice gender discrimination. According to the complaint, Performance Food Group (PFG) has a long history of refusing to hire women for several "operative positions" at its distribution facilities. The EEOC alleges that women have been systematically excluded from warehouse jobs like driver, forklift operator, mechanic, meat packer, and many others. 

The complaint details blatant and pervasive discrimination throughout the company, where gender discrimination was standard operating procedure in hiring decisions. High-ranking company officials openly declared their preference for male employees, stating that women were not capable of warehouse work and pressuring supervisors to fire their female employees. According to the complaint, one vice president asked, "Why would we ever waste our time bringing in females?" And a warehouse selector told a female applicant point-blank that the company "would not hire female drivers."  Read more »

Thirty-five years ago the Pregnancy Discrimination Act outlawed discrimination against pregnant workers. But still today, pregnant women across the country are being fired from their jobs, forced onto unpaid leave, or made to quit when they need temporary accommodations like staying off high ladders or refraining from heavy lifting. Many women can work throughout their pregnancies without any changes to their jobs. But for some pregnant workers – particularly those in low-wage and physically demanding jobs – slight job modifications can be crucial to their ability to continue safely working during pregnancy. Despite the fact that comparable accommodations are routinely offered when employees need them because of disabilities, employers often refuse to make even simple accommodations for pregnant women. As a result, many pregnant women are prevented from continuing to work even when they are willing and able to do so. Other women stay on the job despite a lack of accommodation because they can’t afford not to, potentially jeopardizing their health and the health of their pregnancies.

Today, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), in tandem with A Better Balance (ABB), is releasing It Shouldn't Be A Heavy Lift: Fair Treatment for Pregnant Workers, which tells the stories of eight women who were refused the same sorts of accommodations during their pregnancy that their employers provided to other workers. As the report describes, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) requires employers to treat pregnant workers the same as those “similar in their ability or inability to work.” So if employers make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, as they must under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the PDA requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant workers with similar limitations, too. But all too often, employers and the courts misunderstand and misinterpret these requirements.

Take the case of Peggy Young, whom the Center has written about before. Young worked as an air driver for UPS. When she became pregnant, UPS told her she had to bring a doctor’s note with her restrictions. Her doctor recommended she lift no more than 20 pounds. UPS told Young that UPS has a policy of no light duty for pregnancy – even though the company provided it to employees injured on the job, those protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to others with conditions ranging from high blood pressure to sleep apnea that prevented coworkers from maintaining a commercial driver’s license. Read more »

2010 Chicago Demographics Source: radicalcartography.net

‘Tis the season of the summer blockbuster, but while moviegoers are treated to the decadence of the 1920s, deep space exploration, and 6x the car chases, the familiar tale of racial discrimination in employment plays on a loop in the background. The City of Chicago and the state of South Carolina are not new characters in this story, but *Spoiler Alert* there is a new plot twist: a year after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released guidance for employers on the proper use of criminal background checks, two employers – Dollar General in Chicago and BMW in South Carolina – are allegedly using criminal background checks to weed out potential and current African-American employees.

The guidance released by the EEOC last April draws attention to the general increase in the number of people involved in the American criminal justice system and the disproportionate impact that it has had on minorities:

In the last twenty years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Americans who have had contact with the criminal justice system. . .By the end of 2007, 3.2% of all adults in the United States (1 in every 31) were under some form of correctional control involving probation, parole, prison, or jail.

Arrest and incarceration rates are particularly high for African American and Hispanic men. African Americans and Hispanics are arrested at a rate that is 2 to 3 times their proportion of the general population. Assuming that current incarceration rates remain unchanged, about . . .1 in 3 African American men [are expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime].

1 in 3 African American men will spend time in prison?! Is this some sort of Wes Craven-created nightmare sequence? Read more »

This might be difficult, but try, for a minute, to imagine Congress as a group of artisans – glass blowers, perhaps – who must use their breath to shape the world we live in. Actually, that shouldn’t be too difficult. They may not be artistically inclined (or maybe they are) but obviously, Congress is in the business of shaping our lives through debate (aka their breath) and legislative action.

Today marks the 50^th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, yet Congress has apparently forgotten the importance of using its power for positive change. Read more »

Too many managers today still bring a 1950s mindset to the 21st century workplace. In the 50s and early 60s, shows like Leave it to Beaver taught Americans that “a woman’s place is in the home and I guess as long she’s in the home she might as well be in the kitchen.” Seriously, that comes straight from the mouth of The Beav and Wally’s dad. Check it out:

In fact, the ‘men bring home the bacon/women fry it up in the pan’ trope wasn’t even true in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act became law – 37% of women were in the labor force back then. (Coincidentally 1963 is the same year that Leave it to Beaver’s run ended.)

But it wasn’t until the 1970s that women in professional jobs were shown on t.v. When Mary Rhodes (a.k.a. Mary Tyler Moore) found out she was being paid A LOT less than her male predecessor in her t.v. news producer’s job, she was furious. She confronted her boss, Lou. He admitted Mary was better at her job than the guy paid more, but tried to justify his higher salary on the grounds that he had a family to support. Mary told Lou: by that logic you’d be paying single guys less too, but you don’t! Mary was quick on her feet. Read more »