What would help is first what these truck mechanics Harding points to are already doing, mentoring young women in non-traditional fields. Secondly, unions that represent those industries need to not only be free of sexism themselves, but aggressively pursue lawsuits that would discourage sexual harassment. This is happening with some larger trade unions already, but it's not as wide as it should be.

a big change has been the way we have moved from contract to tort. For most working Americans, the kind of people I represent, this accounts for the biggest change in the way the law now impacts their lives. In the 1950s and 1960s, up to 35 percent of workers, especially men, were covered by collective bargaining agreements...In the last thirty years, there has been a loss of contract rights - to a job, a pension, or even health care - unlike that in any other developed country. It is really a new legal regime that many Americans experience as infuriating, without being able to express that fury in an appropriate way.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the Student/Farmworker Alliance just announced another victory in their campaign to improve the wages, working conditions, and rights of tomato pickers and agricultural workers.

This Whopper™ of a victory must be even tastier (sorry - couldn’t resist) as it comes after the discovery that Burger King hired a company to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance.

Yes, I signed it, and not just because I want The Office to air new episodes as soon as possible.

Actually, rights of content producers with regard to new media are uncharted - and I think horribly mistreated by entertainment companies as a result. And, as the writers have complained, there are some compensation problems.

Many progressives were shocked by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co to interpret workplace discrimination laws so narrowly as to throw out all cases that aren't brought within 180 days of a discriminatory pay decision. This is obviously unfair because one often does not realize for some time that their raise was inadequate. Rep. George Miller (D- CA) and 31 cosponsors have introduced legislation to reverse this unjust decision. Under the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, workers could instead bring suit within 180 days of receiving any paycheck affected by the discriminatory decision.

That might sound reasonable to you but apparently it's an outrage to the White House, which announced today a statement of administration policy strongly opposing the bill. Surely they must have some serious grounds for wanting to prevent potential victims of discrimination from having their day in court right? Wrong. They just hide behind the canard that the bill's "vastly expanded statute of limitations would exacerbate the existing heavy burden on the courts by encouraging the filing of stale claims." That's a pretty weak excuse. Am I crazy to suggest could we call the rightwing's bluff by introducing a bill to simply create more courts and hire more judges since that would presumably solve this problem they hide behind?

cross-posted on TAPPED

The Washington Post had an interesting front page story yesterday on the carpenters union's habit of using unemployed people, typically pulled from homeless shelters or SROs and paid around $8 per hour, to picket outside buildings that use non-union construction labor. I tend to side with critics of this practice. I think that for passersby to see sometimes disheveled or unenthusiastic picketers doesn't create a very positive image of the labor movement. Also paying people just a couple bucks more than minimum wage with no benefits seems hypocritical. I'd urge unions to instead hire a few full-time grassroots activists to whom they pay a living wage plus benefits and can present their message more effectively.

cross-posted on TAPPED. 

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision on pay discrimination is disastrous. Employees must file complaints within 180 days of a salary being set, which is simply outside the bounds of common sense. We all know how much secrecy surrounds pay, even in otherwise congenial workplaces. But the Court has decreed that even when there is a pattern of lower raises for women or minority groups that develops over months or years, an individual employee has no legal recourse after 180 days.

The plaintiff in the suit, Lilly Ledbetter , worked for a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, where she was the only woman out of 17 managers at her level. Although Ledbetter's starting salary was equal to that of her male colleagues, she was given smaller raises and eventually made less than even the lowest-paid man at her level, who started after her.In a characteristically withering dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg invited Congress to overturn the ruling. According to Congressional Quarterly, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and George Miller immediately signified their intent to do so.

Today is May 1st, recognized in all but a handful of countries in the world as “International Workers’ Day.”  The U.S. is one of those handful, that does not commemorate the struggles of working people on the first of this month.  But in fact, May Day originated in the U.S in the late 19th century.

The demand for safe conditions at work places, the right of workers to organize, and above all an eight-hour work day was at the forefront of the burgeoning workers’ rights movement of the 1800s.  In Chicago, the movement culminated with a rally at Haymarket Square that ended violently, with a bomb thrown into the crowd and police opening fire on the marchers.  Subsequently, a group of eight anarchist men were scapegoated for the bombing.  All were convicted, some of them even hanged, and 3 eventually pardoned.

The (organized) labor movement in the U.S. has a history of classism, racism and gender discrimination.  Strides made in the 20th century often came with a price—most notably, in the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from the union-affirming Wagner Act of 1935.  Agricultural and domestic workers also happened to be overwhelmingly either people of color, women, or immigrants.  This continues today, as our most vulnerable workers, especially undocumented migrants, are still not protected from exploitation.

Let today’s May Day be about confronting what has and continues to divide workers, and affirming the right to dignity and economic security that all people deserve.

Home ownership creates wealth, and long-term renting is akin to flushing money down the toilet. Right? Well, think again. A study by The New York Times's David Leonhardt finds that the benefits of renting aren't exclusive to the sub-prime exurban buyers who can't afford their mortgages. In every major metropolitan area, including New York and D.C., home prices would have to make an unlikely rise of between 4 and 5 percent annually for a buyer to break even after five years, which is the average length of time recent homeowners have stayed put. Over the same five-year period, renters were projected to spend far less on overall housing costs.

There are other economic benefits to renting. Research shows that across the United States and Europe, regions with high homeownership rates also have higher unemployment. It makes perfect sense when you think about it: Tying yourself down to a home means you're less likely to accept a new job in another city. You're also more likely to take on a stress-producing, sleep-depriving, carbon-emitting commute, all because you're tethered to the house that seemed like such a great idea. As Leonhardt writes, "Clearly, there are benefits to owning a house beyond the financial, like the comfort of knowing you can stay as long as you want or can fix the roof without permission. But real estate has been sold as more than a good way to spend money. It has been sold as a can't-miss investment." And that's just not the case.

Cross-posted at TAPPED.

You cheered with them when they took on Taco Bell and Yum Brands.  Now, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers has done it again!  For the past 2 years, the CIW has run a campaign to expose the dismal conditions and treatment farmworkers who supply McDonald's receive.  Today, McD's and suppliers have agreed to the following as a result of the campaign:

1. A penny more per pound to workers harvesting tomatoes for McDonald's;
2. A stronger code of conduct based on the principle of worker participation;
3. And a collaborative effort to develop a third party mechanism for monitoring conditions in the fields and investigating workers' complaints of abuse.

Yay CIW!  And we can't forget the important role students played in supporting the campaign, through the spearheading organization Student/Farmworker Alliance, that works in solidarity with the CIW.

The Truth Tour is still on though!  This weekend, organizers, students, workers, and even some celebs will gather in Chicago to demand the dignity and just treatment of farmworkers.

Right now, University of Michigan students are staging a sit-in to end the use of sweatshop labor for university licensed apparel.  The students are demanding that the administration accept a Designated Suppliers Program and Code of Conduct for its licensees, that will actually reward factories for adopting fair and humane labor standards for its workers—thus reversing the “race to the bottom” trend, into a “race to the top.”  The best part of this plan, developed largely by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), is that the Workers’ Rights Consortium, in cooperation with the local union or union-like entity, monitors and evaluates their places of employment for compliance with the Code of Conduct.  Workers can request that the factory be taken off the list of Code-compliant factories if violations occur.

Call, e-mail or fax the University of Michigan president, Mary Sue Coleman, now!  Tell her that you support the students sitting in and want the University of Michigan to be an example to other schools committed to the dignity of workers everywhere.  College apparel is a multi-billion dollar industry, and this plan has the potential to make real change.

Senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler will reintroduce the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress today, and will announce hearings on women’s equality in the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Conservative online media is already up in arms, lamenting the funding the ERA would likely provide, for the first time, to poor women on Medicaid who need to access abortion. Yes, the ERA would help progressives fight for women’s bodily rights. But it is also a crucial legal protection -- one first introduced in Congress in 1923 -- necessary to end workplace discrimination against women, fight wage inequality, and stop obviously sexist corporate practices, such as insurance companies covering the cost of Viagra, but not birth control pills. I remember Maloney speaking at a young women’s leadership event last summer and lamenting the Democratic Party’s move away from strong support for the ERA. Hopefully these new hearings, held under a Congress with its first female speaker, will be a step toward reversing that trend. The amendment simply reads:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

It’s time to put the Phyllis Schlafly era behind us. What’s so offensive in 2007 about equal rights for women?

Cross-posted at TAPPED.

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, Signal International hired hundreds of guest laborers in India, promising them greencards and permanent residency, along with well-paying jobs.  Many of the workers spent their life savings or even sold their houses to pay the fee for H2-B visas, but upon arriving here, were only given the temporary visas, paid half of what they were promised, and found their living conditions squalid.

About a week ago, company representatives and armed security guards raided the workers’ camp, took 6 workers, and locked them in a room, saying they would be deported to India.  One of the workers, Sabu Lal, even slit his wrists hoping that his self-mutilation would keep him from deportation.  He was recently interviewed on Democracy Now: 

“How I can go back to India? There is nothing. My family is waiting for me to fulfill their wishes by earning something from America. They are dreaming to come to America. These guys cheated me. From India, for ’til I come here, they cheated me, and family is cheated…They are treating us like slaves. And whenever we making some comments, they are saying that ‘Just shut your mouth.’”

This weekend, The New York Times Magazine chimed in to a growing conversation about women’s work-family balance with a piece arguing that increasing government support for childcare and health care will encourage women to have more babies and start younger, thus staving off a “baby drought.” I’m unconvinced by the argument that Americans need to be repopulating the world with gas guzzlers any faster than we already are. But of course, it remains a serious inequity -- and a drain on productivity -- that American women do 60 to 70 percent of domestic labor even though in today’s economy, 60 percent of us work outside the home (compared to 74 percent of men). And we learned last week that when women move in with a male partner, we start doing more housework while men do less. How romantic.

In an excellent Nation cover story, journalist and historian Ruth Rosen dubs women’s second- and third-shift labor responsibilities the “care crisis.” Amidst the progressive euphoria post-Election Day last November, some feminists were concerned that the new focus on economic populism would elide “women’s issues.” But so often, feminist and labor issues go hand-in-hand. Consider this: In a study of 173 nations, the United States is one of only five that offer no guaranteed paid parental or sick leave. Our Family and Medical Leave Act, currently under review at the Department of Labor, offers workers only modest protections: 12 weeks of annual unpaid leave for health problems, after the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for sick immediate family members. But the FMLA applies only to companies with 50 or more employees, and does not allow workers to take time off to care for adult brothers, sisters, aunts, or uncles who may have no other caretaker. As the Department of Labor considers possible revisions to the law, business interests are pushing for further restrictions...

But really. This news about the gendered division of household labor just makes me despair. And no, guys (or any future roommates), I'm not willing to live in a den of filth just because you're too lazy to clean up after yourselves.

For a dude's take, go here.

Via Feminist Law Professors: A Florida fruit and vegetable wholesaler will pay $215,000 to five Haitian women tomato graders who were repeatedly sexually molested and verbally harassed. Three of the workers were fired in retaliation for their complaints. The suit was initiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of those saintly non-profits that each and every time you read about them, are doing God's work.

This case reminds us that discrimination and other labor abuses are always against the law -- even when workers are undocumented (it's unclear whether or not the women in this case were legal immigrants). I grew up in Ossining, New York, a de-industrialized Hudson River village that is home to Sing Sing Prison and an ever-growing Ecuadorian immigrant community, many of them undocumented day laborers. Back in Ossining,  Catholic social justice volunteers associated with Marymount College did amazing pro bono legal work for undocumented Ecuadorian workers who had consistenly been denied promised wages. Depending on the region of the country in which an immigrant lives and works, there are shifting risks in pursuing this kind of justice, since most immigrants are unwilling to risk deportation.

But when such cases suceed, the progress can be meaningful for frequently-victimized populations such as migrant female agricultural workers. In the Florida settlement, Gargiulo Inc. has promised to provide Spanish and Creole language training on reporting sexual harassment, as well as adopt a written anti-sexual harassment policy.

On Jan. 16, The New York Times reported on its front page that for the first time in history, more than half (51 percent) of American women were living without spouses. The story, supposedly based on a Times in-house analysis of U.S. census statistics, pissed me off because it was completely class-biased, billed as a good news sociological piece about middle aged divorcees liberated from nagging hubbies. The article completely ignored the staggering difficulty of being a working poor single mother. Anyhow, yesterday I happened upon the Times' public editor column, which I've been mostly ignoring since the staid Byron Calame took over last year from the feisty Daniel Okrent. But the headline--"Can a 15-Year Old Be a 'Woman Without a Spouse?'"--caught my attention. It turns out that the entire "51 percent" hook was a total misrepresentation, and relied upon including in the figure girls as young as 15 and students living in dorms, among other groups of young women who we wouldn't traditionally expect or encourage to be married. In any case, I don't know why Times editors get such hard-ons for these kinds of stretch-the-evidence trend pieces--especially when they have to do with the state of the American woman.

Did you hear that biodegradable weddings are totally in this season? Yeah, I read that in the Style section.

Just as I finished reading the good news that Wal-Mart has joined a pro-universal health care coalition including the SEIU, AT&T, Intel, and my employer, the Center for American Progress, I clicked to another screen and learned that an immense class-action lawsuit alleging widespread sex discrmination at Wal-Mart stores moved forward yesterday. Over 2 million female Wal-Mart workers are elligible to join the suit, making it the largest sex discrimination suit ever filed in the United States. The lead plaintiff, 56-year old Betty Dukes, claims pay and promotion discrimination. It took Dukes three years to advance from cashier to customer service representative, even though men hired after her were promoted in as little as 90 days. Two-thirds of Wal-Mart workers are women, but only one-third of managers.

All of which begs the question: How should progressives engage with a corporation with so many widely-publicized labor abuses (including locking workers inside stores and denying them overtime), an arguably disasterous footprint on the American urban and suburban landscape, and yet a realistic, even pathbreaking, attitude about the health care crisis? When I interviewed SEIU president Andy Stern in November, he said, "We applaud good behavior and we hold people accountable for bad behavior."

It seems like public relations fiascos are just about the only criticisms Wal-Mart responds to. It's good news that they've joined the SEIU and CAP to make progress on health care, but it can't cover up Wal-Mart's despicable record on labor. I hope that as Wal-Mart works in the new coalition, they find themselves embarassed enough by their labor abuses to make some serious changes. Because how can you support a worker's right to health insurance but deny them time off to visit the doctor? How can you want to insure a single mother's child, but "mommy track" that worker, cheating her out of raises and promotions? We should expect better from the nation's largest employer.