Senate

While we only know of one woman who made sure to cast her vote even though her water had broken and her contractions were five minutes apart, she was far from alone in her determination to make her voice heard at the polls yesterday in an election season where women’s health, reproductive rights, and fair pay were frequent flashpoints. Women made up the majority of the electorate on Tuesday—53 percent. Unmarried women were 23 percent of voters, up from 20 percent in 2008. And women’s votes were key to yesterday’s results.

Five new female Senators were elected, resulting in a record 20 women in the Senate. In New Hampshire as of January, for the first time ever in a state the governor, both senators, and all House members will be women.

Women made the difference in rejecting a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as only between a man and a woman. Read more »

Last night was a historic night for women in American political life. A record number of women ran for Congress in 2012. And while still far from equal, the numbers of women in the next Congress will be historically high.

With a few races too close to call, there will apparently be between 75 and 79 women in the House of Representatives, up from 73 currently serving. There will be 20 in the Senate, up from 17 currently serving. This means that women will comprise about 18 percent of the next Congress, up from under 17 percent in the current Congress.

Other historic achievements last night:

• Senator-elect Mazie Hirono (D-HI) became the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the Senate and Hawai’i’s first female Senator.
• Senator-elect Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) became the first openly gay person to be elected to the Senate and Wisconsin’s first female Senator.

In a move that should outrage even the hardest-hearted cynic, yesterday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow votes on 17 district court nominees, even though almost all were reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without objection, and 12 of them have been nominated to courts that are so overwhelmed that the vacant seats have been designated “judicial emergencies.” Many have been waiting for months for a vote on the Senate floor. And confirming these nominees would have reduced the number of judicial vacancies by over one-fifth. Read more »

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced in the Senate today.

When I tell people about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, they are often taken aback that there is a need for this legislation. I get it: it seems like common sense that employees should not be punished for needing medical accommodations like more frequent breaks to drink water, or a stool to sit on behind a cash register.

Yet, stories from across the country make clear that pregnant workers desperately need the protections offered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require that employers provide reasonable accommodations to employees for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical accommodations, just as they do now for employees with disabilities. Pregnant workers have been forced onto unpaid leave – or even fired – simply for asking for accommodations like a bathroom or water break. When pregnant workers have challenged these decisions in court, they have lost. This is because courts have held that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not explicitly require employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers – a loophole the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would close. Read more »

Heather got fired from Wal-Mart for carrying a water bottle.

Natasha was forced onto unpaid leave and then fired because her district manager at Rent-A-Center found out she needed help with occasional heavy lifting on the sales floor.

Sarah* lost her job at a fast food restaurant for taking bathroom and water breaks.

What do all of these women have in common? They were all pregnant.

All they needed were minor adjustments to continue safely working during pregnancy.  They didn’t get these adjustments.  And they all lost their jobs because of it.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would put an end to this absurdity. Senators Bob Casey and Jeanne Shaheen will introduce the bill in the U.S. Senate today. Representative Jerrold Nadler introduced the PWFA in the U.S. House of Representatives in May, and it now has more than 100 co-sponsors. Public health organizations, business organizations, women’s organizations, worker organizations, and religious groups have lined up in support as well.

The PWFA would make it illegal to fire a pregnant employee who requests a reasonable accommodation – such as a water break, bathroom break, or modification of a lifting requirement. Pregnant workers would have the same rights to temporary accommodations on the job that are available to workers with disabilities.

Why do we need this bill? Stories like the ones above sound like they are from the Dark Ages, right? Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 made it illegal to discriminate against pregnant workers, women were expected to quit their jobs when they became pregnant. Back then, pregnancy was widely regarded as a disabling condition. Read more »

It’s the last week of August, and just as millions of kids around the country are zipping up their backpacks for the first time in many months, so too the Senate will be preparing to come back into session after Labor Day. Between the political conventions, religious holidays, and Senators’ desire to campaign in their states before the November elections, there’s not much time to actually conduct the people’s business in September. But there’s a lot to do.

One must-do priority is confirming the backlog of judicial nominees – and if longstanding Senate practices were followed, this could be accomplished quickly and easily. Right now, there are 18 nominees to federal district courts around the county who have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and are simply waiting for a vote to be scheduled. It may come as a surprise if you’ve been watching Congress lately, but the Senate could confirm all of these nominees in a block, in a single scheduled vote. Indeed, as Senator Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has reminded us in recent months, the Senate routinely used to vote on groups of nominees, as many as 18 at a time.  Read more »

Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee issued a searing indictment of for-profit colleges. The report, “For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success,” was the result of Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)’s two-year investigation into the growing for-profit higher education sector.

The report found that although for-profit colleges, in theory, have an important role to play in higher education and should be well-equipped to meet the needs of non-traditional students—such as older students and single parents—the reality is quite different.

For-profit education is a big money-making industry that puts profits ahead of student success. More widgets = more profit. Except for that the widgets in this case are students. So it’s no surprise that companies that the report examined spent $4.2 billion (with a capital “B”) on marketing and recruiting, equivalent to 22.7% of all revenue.

This incentive structure has led to aggressive, misleading, and deceptive recruiting practices that look a lot like a sales process. For example, training materials from some for-profits showed that recruiters were taught to locate and manipulate prospective students’ fears.

And it’s working! These schools sink incredible amounts of money on marketing and recruiting, and are reaping incredible profits. In 2009, publicly traded companies operating for-profit colleges had an average profit margin of nearly 20% (and paid their CEOs an average of $7.2 million). Read more »

Did your Senators do the right thing?

Find out how your Senators voted on ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest 2 percent. And send them a quick message!

Yesterday, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans. Ending these tax cuts would save $1 trillion over the next 10 years and help protect programs that are critical to women at every stage of their lives.

While some Senators did the right thing, others did not. Take two minutes to find out how your Senators voted and send them a message.

Our advocacy isn't done when the vote is tallied. We need to make sure your Senators know that you are watching their votes because this issue will come up again. Read more »

Last week, I lamented that, in an era of 70+ judicial vacancies and 20+ nominees cooling their heels waiting for a vote, the Senate is only managing to schedule votes on one district court nominee per week. Read more »

Last week, the Senate HELP Committee (that’s Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions) held a hearing on an important piece of bipartisan legislation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would provide lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals with long overdue protection against discrimination in the workplace. Specifically, ENDA would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in both public and private employment (with exemption for small businesses and certain religious employers). Although in certain circumstances, LGBT individuals are currently protected from employment discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there is no federal law that explicitly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The HELP Committee hearing provided an important opportunity for advocates, scholars, and business executives to explain their support (and in one case, opposition) of ENDA to members of the Senate. It also marked an historic occasion—Kylan Broadus, Founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, became the first openly transgender person to testify before the Senate, a milestone that Senator Harkin (and the Washington Blade) noted. Broadus spoke movingly about his experiences as a transgender American and with workplace discrimination, and described his transition as “a matter of living the truth and sharing that truth for the first time in [his] life.” Read more »