A good article on anti-pregnancy discrimination in USA Today (although I do have a couple of nit-picks). Here are some key passages:
Pregnancy discrimination complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) jumped 39% from fiscal year 1992 to 2003, according to a recent analysis of government data by the Washington-based National Partnership for Women & Families. During that same time, the nation’s birthrate dropped 9%.
The surge in pregnancy complaints makes it one of the fastest-growing types of employment discrimination charges filed with the EEOC … outpacing the rise in sexual harassment and sex discrimination claims.[…]
The rise in pregnancy discrimination cases is important now because more women of child-bearing age are in the labor force: Women make up about 47% of the total labor force, and they’re projected to account for more than half of the increase in total labor force growth from 2002 until 2012, according to the Department of Labor.
And more working women are having children at a later age, when careers are better established and more is financially at stake. In 2000, the average American woman having her first child was almost 25 years old. In 1970, the average age was 21.4 years for a first birth, according to a 2002 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[…]
“We’ve seen an explosion, a huge increase in cases,” says Mary Jo O’Neill, a regional lawyer with the EEOC. “The kind of cases we’re seeing are very blatant, cases where managers say, ‘We don’t want pregnant women working here.’ ”
Several factors may be behind the trend:
* More pregnant women are staying in the workplace rather than going on early leave. More women are working while pregnant, and they’re working further into their pregnancies. In the decade before the 1978 passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, more than half of employed women quit their jobs when they became pregnant, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families analysis of government data. The non-profit education and advocacy group also found that, by the early 1990s, that number dropped to 27% of pregnant women.
The discrimination is more prevalent because there are so many more women who are working pregnant,” says Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. “People think pregnancy discrimination is a thing of the past, that it doesn’t happen anymore. But it does.”
* Productivity pressures and the economy. The sluggish economy in recent years has pushed employers to lay off workers and stress productivity, leaving fewer employees doing more work. Employers may see pregnant workers … with pending maternity leave and their possible need for more flexible work arrangements in the future … as a liability.
“Pregnancy is expensive for employers,” says Veronica Duffy, an employment lawyer in Rapid City, S.D., who has represented pregnant women filing discrimination claims. “And as health insurance costs rise, costs become more of an issue. Employers are driven to discriminate.”
* Stereotypes about pregnant women persist. Mounting research shows that women who become pregnant are viewed as less competent in the workplace … a view that is held by both male and female co-workers.
In one study published in 1993 in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, pregnant and non-pregnant women performed tasks that were rated by college students drafted for the research. While both subjects performed the same, those who were pregnant consistently received lower performance ratings. They were viewed as overly emotional, often irrational, physically limited and less than committed to their jobs, according to the report.
In another study, pregnant women were interviewed about their own experiences on the job. About half said their supervisors’ reactions to their pregnancies were negative, according to the report published in 1997 in the Journal of Business and Psychology.
They also reported intrusive comments from co-workers, including such comments as, “Why are you eating so much?” and, “Do you have stretch marks yet?” About half of pregnant women managers said subordinates became upset or hostile.
“When women become pregnant, they’re seen as putting personal life ahead of work,” says Jane Halpert, an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at DePaul University who worked on the studies. “There’s a whole set of separate attitudes that show up at work when you get pregnant.”
It’s worth reading the entire article, which also includes several real-life stories of pregnant women who have experienced discrimination.
The article suggests a couple of times that maybe the poor widdle employers are just confused and don’t understand the regulations, because state and federal regulations sometimes don’t match. That strikes me as bullshit; if, as the EEOC rep said, “The kind of cases we’re seeing are very blatant, cases where managers say, ‘We don’t want pregnant women working here,’ ” then what’s going on isn’t innocent, well-meaning managers not understanding subtle nuances of the law.
The article also conflates employer eagerness to get rid of pregnant employees due to the medical expenses of pregnancy and infants with “Productivity pressures and the economy.” Actually, that should be seen as a separate issue. Employers – rather than the government – are (sometimes) expected to pay medical costs in the United States. In every other first-world country, the government picks up such expenses. Employers in other first-world countries, all else held equal, feel much less pressure to discriminate against pregnant women.
Via LA Mom.
You said: The article also conflates employer eagerness to get rid of pregnant employees due to the medical expenses of pregnancy and infants with “Productivity pressures and the economy.”? Actually, that should be seen as a separate issue. Employers – rather than the government – are (sometimes) expected to pay medical costs in the United States. In every other first-world country, the government picks up such expenses. Employers in other first-world countries, all else held equal, feel much less pressure to discriminate against pregnant women.
I say: This is confusing to me. If employers are paying for health care insurance, they face higher costs simply for hiring women, who are the only ones who can become pregnant. Those costs are in advance of the pregnancy itself. Firing the pregnant woman won’t save anything, assuming another non-pregnant employee is then hired and has the company pay for insurance. It’s also possible to simply opt out of pregnancy coverage on health insurance, something my company has considered in the past. Or make it something employees themselves are forced to pay for.
So, I understand the productivity stuff, but the medical cost thing seems like a red herring.
Health care expenses can be experience-rated — the employer will have to pay higher premiums next year if his or her employees used up a lot of health care in the past year.
In my experience, looking at this as “pregnancy discrimination” misses the bigger picture. Pregnancy discrimination is just a subset of health/disability discrimination (whether you view pregnancy as a “disability” is irrelevant — employers do.)
When employees get disabled in any way, the first thing employers do is start looking for ways to get rid of them. Otherwise, they’ll have to start looking for part-time replacements while their employee is on FMLA leave or workers’ comp. or they’ll have to make “reasonable accomodations” or some such.
I’m not saying these aren’t all great laws, and shouldn’t be enforced. They certainly make things better for employees. But employers hate it, and will do everything they can to get out of having a “special” employee.
I think it’s scary to live in a country where pregnancy might be viewed as a disability (quotation marks intentionally excluded) by employers. I think if anything this underscores the fact that we need more women in higher, decision-making positions. I don’t think we’d be having this discussion if the interpretation of these “laws” were for the most part in the hands of female CEOs.
I worked in higher education for a while, a field in which there are high concentrations of females who have gotten pregnant (and thankfully not become disabled because of this) and taken at least a 3-month leave. I would think about the issue solely from my perspective as a male. During one particular semester, three female colleagues left and the department was not able to find temporary replacements for all instructors. Some of us were assigned additional responsibilities without necessarily a corresponding pay hike. The situation also made me think about how, at the time of my hiring, I might have had an unfair advantage over some female applicants of reproductive age who might have truly been more qualified than me.
I think it’s important to have women’s voices on this issue heard by men, not only in the media but within households. In our society men generally seem to pay more attention to how to abide by the rules/laws (which for the most part they have created) when assessing a MORAL dilemma. Also, whether as cause or consequence of the former, men seem to place more trust in how these rules/laws can make things better for everyone. I would think that these tendencies are made even more extreme by cases such as pregnancy, which we cannot hope to fully understand by our biologically-limited participation in the process of carrying the child.
Anyway, for whom (and for what purpose) is increased productivity important if NOT to maintain a viable and sustainable environment for the well being of contemporary youth and subsequent generations? Furthermore, why can’t we see that there are limits to the growth of productivity, and that we are seeing evidence of how we are overstepping them in how we are not only unable to raise our country’s youth properly but moreover have no time to raise them, period!?!?
Problem is that CEOs are responsible to the shareholders. Shareholders only care about the bottom line. Pregnant employees negatively affect the bottom line. Needless to say no public company will be happy about “special” employees.
If employers are paying for health care insurance, they face higher costs simply for hiring women, who are the only ones who can become pregnant.
But the women they’re covering aren’t necessarily employees — plenty of men have wives on their company policies, wives who can get pregnant.
A friend of mine lost her job last year on a pretext, and it was clear it was discriminatory (she’s a not-visibly-disabled black woman who’d taken maternity leave). She was on leave during the busy season in her department, the season in which productivity is assessed for purposes of bonuses and promotions (and retention). She was fired because — get this — her productivity had declined from the previous year. They really didn’t try very hard to make up something more believable and harder to challenge.
Boy, the notion that women are more expensive because of pregnancy strikes me as after-the-fact excuse-making of the worst sort. Men are much more likely to have heart attacks, aren’t they? What’s more expensive–delivering a baby or open heart surgery?
It’s actually primarily women who argue that their pregnancy needs to be accommodated like a disability. If you read the cases being brought, a constant theme is preganant women suing because their employers refuse to provide an accommodation, as required under the ADA.
Pregnancy discrimination is an interesting subset of discrimination cases and I think USA Today misses the bigger story. While there are cases where women sue because they are being treated differently than non-pregnant employees, there is also a large group of cases where women unsuccessfully sue because they are treated like everyone else, but argue they should be treated differently.
The law is what treats pregnancy like a disability. The federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires employers to treat pregnant women the same way they treat non-pregnant male or female employees with a temporary disability. If the employer treats temporarily disabled employees (who by definition aren’t covered by the ADA) like crap than it’s not necessarily illegal to treat pregnant women like crap as well.
I hate it that pregnancy is never treated as the individual circumstance that it is. For some lucky women, you will experience no diminution of energy at all, and your productivity will be just what it was before. After that, maybe you just want a brief stay at home, ’cause you’re just raring to get back into the office.
I was not in this category. For my youngest, I was over 40, borderline gestational diabetes, tired A LOT, and I was wanted to do part-time from home for a while. For one self-identified feminist at the office, this was just too much. “We fought too hard for pregnancy to be treated as a disability and for mothers to stay home!” (Note that she didn’t decide to do her graduate degree and start her career till her youngest was in high school, so this didn’t apply to her.) So for some, it may be like a disability in that you need some accomodation.
But pregnancy is not a disability in the sense that if affects a minority of people (not that that changes anything.) Most women, half the population, has at least one child. And if we make life just too tough to have a family, we shouldn’t be surprised if there are few workers to support us in our old age (but oh, I forget. My stock market investments– courtesy of Mr. Bush– will tide me over in luxury.)
How odd to read this tonight after the conversation I had with one of my employees. My employee has a 9 month old daughter and husband who’s a contractor, she has a job that requires a bit of travel. I’m new at my company, and was told that this employee was probably going to be shifted to another project which would require at least 80% overnight travel in the next month or so. Before I go on, I need to point out that my employees have all complained about the fact the company does not respect work:life balance and management penalizes “9 to 5ers”.
Last week I was called into the VP’s (my boss) office to discuss staffing and it’s been decided that a different employee (with significantly more experience) would be moved to the other projects. Needless to say, my employee was very upset as she felt she was given the shaft because she is a new mom.
I did not make the decision, but I did support it when it was relayed to me. The decision was primarily based on her inexperience (she wanted the change to gain more experience) but there may have been some concern about the additional travel despite her willingness to take it on. I was concerned about the stress of travel because her daughter is so young, she occasionally has to jump through hoops with daycare arrangements and I don’t think she needs this additional travel just to pay her dues.
I went out of my way to let her know that I actually prefer to keep her on my team because she is much more reliable than the others and that I will go out of my way to this work for her. She still feels penalized for having a baby and this because she now has a boss who’s trying to accommodate her needs and ensure she is not penalized for it.
Thanks for the link, Amp!
I’ve been saying for a while that we need a childbearing version of the ADA (covering both pregnancy and the needs of parents). I didn’t realize that the ADA also doesn’t cover people with other temporary disabilities. Shameful.
It seems a little presumptuous to think that you understand your employee’s needs better than she does. If they don’t want her to do the travel because they want someone with more experience, fine, but because she might find it hard to find daycare — when she *requested* the travel? That sounds like “let’s not let the mother make decisions about her career and keep her from getting experience — you know, for the baby”.
Well, as luck would have it, I’m expecting a baby again in October. Likely enough, you’ll all get to see Sydney Quinn’s sibling tearing up the hyperlinks with big sis Sydney (after that, Matt and I are done) but I can’t help but kind of smirk/chuckle and shake my head at some of the commentary that is so utterly — well — clueless, with regards to the state of pregnancy.
On one hand people want to belittle women that strive to have more supports in place for the temporary state of pregnancy. It’s so odd that our culture values pregnancy and non-termination of pregnancy, but are so shitty about rallying around support structures that would make pregnancy and child-rearing a less anxiety filled situation for women. On the other hand, we have people attempting to take away rights, consent and in general copping a ‘we know what’s best for you.’ While I understand the comments made from Ol’ Cranky are made in the right supportive spirit (read: this isn’t an attempt at a flame), I can’t help but wonder if the employers are as quick to deny fathers positions because they have babies. It seemed to be an admitted factor that implies the employed woman isn’t capable of making an informed decision or valid commitment because her womb was occupied a year prior. While I could not leave my child for that long a duration, I know for sure that my husband feels exactly the same way, yet I suspect the only one that would face such an obstacle of patronization would be me.
An aside that goes in tandem with this thread is the issue of denial of VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) medical care without considering the health or desires of the pregnant woman. In essence medical providers are taking on the role of dictatorial parent and denying women their rights to informed consent and making them undergo surgery due to dodge any potential litigation.
Bottom line, pregnant women experience a huge amount of patronizing behavior as if any fucking bit of support is a favor, and any major decision can be made without her. I’m sorry, was I imagining it this past year when Gdub and pals were all rallying around the sanctity of family as their reasoning for attacks on non-traditional marriages? I guess the concern for families only goes so far as keeping those blasphemous fags from soiling the holy union.
So I guess I’ll step out and be the foul-mouthed zealot here and remind everyone that pregnant women are fucking superhero’s. Support is not only a good thing, it’s damn well deserved and necessary. Hell, parental support such as those implemented in many of the scandanavian countries should make people from the US hang their heads in shame. Society needs to learn that if it wants healthy and productive families, it needs to stop making the creation of such impossible via discrimination and the denial of options.
While I don’t feel pregnancy should be seen as a disability, I most certainly support it being seen as an exceptional situation that deserves a network of mandatory supports and regulations that pay homage to the challenges pregnancy present. To me it isn’t an admission of weakness, but instead a demand for respectful acknowledgement and reaction to the temporary state that our republican friends like to refer to as the sanctity of life.
If I may be permitted a bit of off-the-cuff, evidence-free psychologizing here, I’d speculate that for at least some of those who discriminate against pregnant women, they fear pregnant women because they fear that being pregnant means you’re just about to give birth any minute. Rationally, the discriminator may know that you aren’t due for three more months (or whatever), but something in in the back of his head is afraid that you’re suddenly going to go into labor, and your icky nasty girl parts are going to start dialating, and he doesn’t want you to be around when that happens. What are your thoughts? Plausible hypothesis? Implausible?
Employers are, by and large, rational beings. They dislike employing mothers-to-be for the same reasons, by and large, that they dislike employing other people whose productivity is reduced by some factor. Some of those factors are “blame”-type situations where the low-producing individual is engaging in self-destructive or irresponsible behavior; much of the time they are situations where something “just is”. It’s the moral hazard of employing someone; you might have a full-time or occasional lemon on your hands.
It is possible to argue that the productivity reduction from being pregnant is very small. Overall, it may well be. I am morally certain there are some number of cases n, n substantially > 0, where that reduction is zero or so nearly zero as to make no difference. I am morally certain that there is some semi-regular distribution of productivity drops thereafter, with some relatively few becoming quite unproductive. Definitely no more of those cases than of the opposite extreme; probably fewer. I am morally certain that there could be some number of cases p where pregnancy actually increased productivity – perhaps in a case where someone with a pay-per-work-unit salary model needs more funds.
My own first-hand observation of a pregnant woman was my wife; she worked hard before, during and after her pregnancy. I would gauge that it started taking her maybe 10-15% more energy/time/effort to accomplish a particular task (less than early on, and a little more later on, of course.)
A pregnant woman also presents a case of what Secretary Rumsfeld would refer to as “a known unknown”. We know she’s going to have a baby at some point (some tragic accident aside); we have a pretty reasonable idea of when, but there is some not inconsiderable variance. So each mother-to-be represents a fairly significant investment in risk.
Risks often yield returns. Quite possibly someone whose company treated them well and generously during pregnancy and nurtured their return to the workforce would become exceptionally loyal and provide years of uninterrupted competence, without agency difficulties. It would be interesting to see an analysis of the frequency of this phenomenon; I have no first-hand data.
In a completely free market, employers would compensate for the predicted range of small upside to modest downside expected from having each mother-to-be on staff, with lowered compensation or a pay-per-work-unit salary structure. Most liberals and many conservatives would argue that a completely free market is too heartless to be allowed to operate in the particular circumstance – particularly in view of the fact that a pregnant woman may very well be a person who wishes to keep a child and needs money to do so, and propose legislative or regulatory barriers on employers to prevent this scenario. I agree with that restriction, for humanitarian reasons among others.
Despite that restriction, of course, employers do find ways to lower or alter compensation even in cases where they are not permitted to do so. This could be a (fairly small) contributing factor to the “wage gap”. The most obvious way I see for employers to do this is to increase the number of low-wage jobs in an enterprise and spread the risk around a larger pool of employees. (One super-skilled computer programmer earning $170K might be replaced with four earnest young CS graduates pulling $40K apiece.) As a manager, I can get good results out of either talent pool. At some socioeconomic levels, this might produce good results; our CS example, for instance, where one person earning a very good wage gives way to four people earning a reasonable wage. At the bottom tiers of the economic ladder, we would see effects that are a net negative, at least in my view; replacing a $15 an hour journeyman in a factory with three $5/hr semi-legal workers somewhere is not a benefit. (The workers might disagree.)
There are undoubtedly cultural factors – items that feminists would categorize as misogyny or sexism – that contribute to this phenomenon of discrimination against pregnant women – particularly, as mentioned by others, instances of women’s career decisions being overridden by bosses. The impact of that discrimination is, undoubtedly, significant, and severe to the individuals most directly affected. (I have yet to see any proposal or proposition that would do anything about this; nor anything particularly interesting. Mostly, more laws that say “don’t act in your own economic interest!” Um, yeah. I’ll get right on that.)
You may not see proposals in the sense of “congress should pass the following law,” Robert, but I think raising awareness has some value in itself. We can all change the culture in some small way. No, Amp’s not going to single-handedly end pregnancy discrimination. Surely, some people still think that alcohol is a great social ill, but only the most unsubtle and backward looking still think we should re-institute the 18th amendment. This is not to say that government has no place in fighting pregnancy discrimination, but it’s not the only thing.
Are pregnant women objectively less productive than non-pregnant women? I don’t know. I think I’d need to see hard data, but I can construct a semi-plausible (to me) model that in which, while preganant women may lose productivity (which I concede ad argumentum, not because I have hard evidence that this is so), they still have a productivity edge on the average worker: let’s say there are two groups of women: half are “slackers” and half are “workaholics.” The slackers are 20% less productive than the average worker in the firm, and the workaholics are 20% more productive. Whenever a slacker gets pregnant, she goes on leave. Whenever a workaholic gets pregnant, she stays at the job. Let’s say that pregnancy reduces overall productivity by 10%. In that case, those women who stay at work, all workaholics, STILL have a 10% productivity edge on the average worker in the firm, including the average of non-pregnant women, and discriminating against her in the belief that she is dragging down average productivity is economically irrational. Yes, that was all completely made up, with no evidence, but neither of us are citing hard data here. Of course, one might complicate the model with aspects like the fact that some slackers will stay on the job during pregnancy for financial or social reasons, and some workaholics will take leave due to unusually difficult pregnancies, and that the majority of women will not be at the extremes of “workaholic” or “slacker” but somewhere in the middle. You see my overall point, though, that there could be a Darwinian pressure that means that those women who continue to work through late pregnancy could be self-selected as the most motivated and determined workers?
On the other hand, one might argue that the above model is complete balderdash, because taking leave owing to pregnancy is determined by the health/pregnancy situation of the woman, not by her motivation to stay at work.
I can speculate that pregnant women are more productive than average, I can speculate that they’re just as productive as average, and I can speculate that they’re less productive than average. Ultimately, only data can resolve such questions, and even then, there would probably be several interpretations.
BTW, luke, I think the idea that the relationship between CEOs and boards (or shareholders as a whole) is some form of efficient Coasian bargain in which the individual CEO is irrelevant has been shown to have little evidence in its favor by recent events. How were shareholders benefitting their bottom line by giving easily-forgiven loans to CEOs so they could build mansions?
Society needs to learn that if it wants healthy and productive families, it needs to stop making the creation of such impossible via discrimination and the denial of options.
Amen, Kim!
Is the denial of VBAC care as bad in Oregon as it is in California? We thought you Oregonians were so much cooler about stuff like that.
the temporary state that our republican friends like to refer to as the sanctity of life
Yes, a lot of right-wingers do seem to think that the sanctity of life is a temporary state!
From the perspective of an employer, I think there is another consideration. Every pregnant employee is an employee who is about to leave them permanently after they decide to stay home with the baby. Employers have burned by pregnant employees who insist they are going to come back to work and therefore the employer leaves the job open, only to have the employee use up their sick leave, annual leave, maternity leaven, and FMLA . . . and then decide they aren’t coming back. Every time an employee does this to an employer–or takes maternity leave knowing they have no exepectation of returning to work–she is making it more difficult for other pregnant employees.
“Every time an employee does this to an employer”“or takes maternity leave knowing they have no exepectation of returning to work”“she is making it more difficult for other pregnant employees. ”
Or, conversely, we could structure our ideas of “work” and “productivity” to meet the needs of those who are female bodied, rather than relying on the male bodied as the status quo. There is no natural law that suggests the capitalist system has to remain wedded to the male body. Deconstruct the paradigm and then pregnant women and mothers would have more options — and so would employers.
Joan,
Unfortunately yes – I received a call from my doctors office (prior to any physical examination) stating that they will refuse to treat me unless I consent to no VBAC. The explanation given was regarding litigation management or some crap. It absolutely denies me any opportunity to participate in this healthcare decision, and denies any rights of informed consent. Needless to say, I was floored, since I was fully expecting to be part of the decision at the very least.
The kicker is that my husband and I are full-time students, so on OHP. This means we are limited to certain healthcare providers, of which one of the most common is Providence, which I’m on. I’m curious if they are going to try to force an amnio on me since I’m 34 – can we say ‘oh hell no!’?
Anyways, sorry if I thread-drifted a bit on this topic, but it’s hard for me to seperate discrimination against pregnant women on the micro level right now, I think I’m a bit too close to the subject matter.
Warm Regards,
Kim
“Or, conversely, we could structure our ideas of “work”? and “productivity”? to meet the needs of those who are female bodied, rather than relying on the male bodied as the status quo.”
Consider a (composite) client of mine. This person owns an auto body shop. It is a multi-ethnic worthplace with both male and female employees. There are currently 7 employees — my client recently hired a new one due to lots of new work. My client is doing well enough, but is certainly not rich, and would struggle mightily with, say, an unexpected $40,000 expense.
So, now there are eight people (boss and seven workers) doing the job here. One employee is injured with a diffuse array of medical problems (back, foot, neck, etc.) and is taking several days of irregular FMLA leave every month. This is allowed, since your 12 weeks do not need to be consecutive — if necessary, you could take off every Friday for the whole year (52 days) and still be under the FMLA maximum (12 weeks= 60 days).
Another employee is pregnant, and has said that she intends to take 12 weeks of leave next month.
So, here’s my guy with 7 employees, because he needs 8 people to do all the work, and he knows that beginning next month, there are going to regularly be days when he’s going to only have 6 people doing 8 people’s worth of work. If he doesn’t get the work done, his clients will start going to some other company — that’s the only definition of “work” or “productivity” that makes any sense to him. He can ask everyone to work 25% overtime (and pay overtime rates), or he can hire a new employee to pick up the slack — but if it’s a temp, he probably won’t be that good, and if he’s permanent he’s going to have too many employee when everyone is back at work.
Now, the client calls me up and asks, “How can I get through this stretch without paying out tens of thousands of extra dollars? They’re both good employees, but I can’t afford to have them bouncing in and out for the next few months? I want to fire them and replace them with permanent employees I can count on.”
And I tell him he can’t do that. And I hope that a year from now he’s still in business.
I dunno, Richard, I think it’s pretty telling that you included in your scenario the fact that the employer is unwilling or biased against hiring temp work (which is what the majority of companies do). In essence, it seems to me that you’re saying that it’s okay for the individual to bear the burden, but a company having to make any temporary arrangements that wouldn’t benefit them 100% is somehow enough to justify them discriminating? I hope I’m reading that wrong, but otherwise, you and I? We live on two different planets of social responsibility.
“In essence, it seems to me that you’re saying that it’s okay for the individual to bear the burden, but a company having to make any temporary arrangements that wouldn’t benefit them 100% is somehow enough to justify them discriminating?”
Big companies hire lots of temp workers. For a small company, it’s often not worth it.
In my mind, these laws are like an “unfunded mandate.” In the “bad old days” employers could fire people for any reason whatsoever. Then, Congress came along and said, “You can’t fire people.” That’s great. But taking away an employers freedom is expensive. Are we — as a society — willing to bear the costs of our decision to limit the ability to fire wantonly?
I’m not a Republican stooge or anything. I’m not saying repeal the laws and take it back to the old days (Heck, I’d be out of work! I do employment discrimination law on both sides — plaintiff and employer — so I usually get paid now whether the termination was lawful or not.)
Maybe we could have some sort of “anti-discrimination” tax that could be paid to employers who have to pay overtime or hire expensive temps because they couldn’t fire an employee who was out on leave.
My point is that it’s easy to say, “There ought to be a law.” But if your law is fire-at-will, then you should have to pay for good unemployment benefits for displaced workers, and if your law is can’t-fire, then you should have to pay for the increased costs this will impose on actual people who run businesses and find themselves working late into the night because we wouldn’t let them fire-and-replace an absent employee.
Luckily for your hypothetical client, Richard, neither the FMLA nor the federal anti-discrimination laws apply since he only has 7 employees. (State laws may be another matter.) Therefore, he can fire his temporarily disabled employee AND his pregnant employee and rest assured that it’s perfectly legal according to federal law. Of course, he will then have some expenses in retraining the new hires, expenses which he will have to incur over and over because humans are biological organisms subject to breakdown. Believe it or not, firing good employees whenever they get sick or procreate isn’t always the most financially sensible course.
Holly,
You are right. FMLA only applies to employers with 50 or more employees. Where I practice, the relevant statutes are the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (4 or more employees) and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (everyone).
These are not bad laws. (The NJLAD is most famous for being the law that held that the Boy Scouts couldn’t exclude homosexuals). They do, however, have costs.
Kim’s reference to “social responsibility” is apt. In my book, “social responsibility” is the obligations I impose upon myself. I do not act in a “socially responsible” manner just be imposing policies on others. When I decide — as a member of society — that we should impose a policy that harms some individuals, I think it is also “responsible” to — as a society — pay for those costs.
“Believe it or not, firing good employees whenever they get sick or procreate isn’t always the most financially sensible course.”
My clients do not know the law. They do, however, know what will cost them more money. When they have a good employee, they will bend over backwards to accomodate. Most employees (by definition) are at or below average, and easily replaceable. It is unfortunate, but true.
Wolfangel:
It seems a little presumptuous to think that you understand your employee’s needs better than she does. If they don’t want her to do the travel because they want someone with more experience, fine, but because she might find it hard to find daycare ““ when she *requested* the travel? That sounds like “let’s not let the mother make decisions about her career and keep her from getting experience ““ you know, for the baby”
First off, I did not make the decision (as I made clear above). I do, however, know her developmental needs better than she does and that she’s balked at traveling to do some of the menial tasks and, as I also mentioned, complained about the lack of flexibility with regard to time (travel significantly decreases flexibility). We can’t afford employees who travel 80% during critical periods making frequent changes and juggle rescheduling of trips because we end up getting further behind – this creates more work and isn’t cost-effective (this is cross-country overnight travel).
Most importantly, as I said above, the primary reason she was not moved to the other project is because she doesn’t have the experience under her belt to be able to hit the ground running which is what the other project needs. She’s still at the beginning of the learning curve for these tasks because she had little practical experience prior to going out on maternity leave and hasn’t had the opportunity to progress much further (she describes herself as not being comfortable conducting the types of trips that would make up the first 2.5-3 months on the new project). On the contrast, she will still get the experience doing the same tasks, which includes substantial travel, on her current project; she will also get experience doing higher level tasks on her current project.
Aside from the fact she’s on a stagnant project I want to have completed by Fall, she’s actually in a much better position for overall growth staying put.
Ol Cranky:
I was concerned about the stress of travel because her daughter is so young, she occasionally has to jump through hoops with daycare arrangements and I don’t think she needs this additional travel just to pay her dues.
This seems to be about “wow, let’s keep her out of travel so she doesn’t need to worry about daycare”. I will not argue about whether there are other reasons for her to be not given those responsibilities — you’ve listed them, and I have no reason to doubt them. But those reasons (lack of experience, frequent changing of plans, need in a current local project, and so on) are sufficient without bringing in some “plus, it’ll just be easier on her baby” argument, which is what that initial comment was.
I was interested in Q Grrl’s observation:
“Or, conversely, we could structure our ideas of “work”? and “productivity”? to meet the needs of those who are female bodied, rather than relying on the male bodied as the status quo. There is no natural law that suggests the capitalist system has to remain wedded to the male body. Deconstruct the paradigm and then pregnant women and mothers would have more options ““ and so would employers.”
Inspired by the discussion about types of feminism, I think it could be argued that capitalism isn’t intrinsically designed to meet the needs of any “body” as it isn’t designed to meet the needs of workers; it’s “meant” to meet the needs of capital. Read Marx on the alienation of labor, on how the products of laboring people’s bodies no longer belong to them or have any intrinsic relationship to them. And insofar as capitalism profits by pitting one group of workers against another, I doubt that capitalism could ever embrace the male body or the female body. Especially not the female body, not when females have typically served as a low-paid “reserve” labor force. The fact that some exceptional women have done well in recent years hasn’t really changed the situation of most women laboring in capitalist economies, or what their vulnerabilities have been over time. I think you could also question what the capitalist commitment is in terms of “reproduction” of the labor force. Marx would suggest it’s the bare minimum it can get away with.
My understanding is that the point of the nuclear family, with its prescribed gender roles, is to shift the costs of reproducing labor power onto workers, mostly by making women do most of the childrearing and domestic tasks for free, out of obligation and duty.
Divvying up domestic tasks between men and women more equitably would help, but men can’t get pregnant. What’s really needed is socializing the processes and the costs of childcare. That wouldn’t mean the end of capitalism, but it would be a move against it. This sounds like an example where small capitalists would have interests in line with workers, against the large capitalists.
Julian writes: In the “bad old days”? employers could fire people for any reason whatsoever. Then, Congress came along and said, “You can’t fire people.”?
errr… actually people in unions organized & fought for their rights, which included not having to be subject to the whim of employers. Congress was a bit of a johnny-come-lately, as usual.
But taking away an employers freedom is expensive.
evidence?
Are we ““ as a society ““ willing to bear the costs of our decision to limit the ability to fire wantonly?
personally speaking, yes. again, it would nice to see some evidence about these costs. perhaps compared with some figures on the costs of allowing employers to fire-at-will.
Most employees (by definition) are at or below average, and easily replaceable. It is unfortunate, but true.
do you mean employers intentionally hire at-or-below-average people so that they’re easily replaceable? or do you mean that generally speaking, employees are just average or below average in competence?
do you mean employers intentionally hire at-or-below-average people so that they’re easily replaceable? or do you mean that generally speaking, employees are just average or below average in competence?
He is expressing a statistical truth. By definition, half of all workers are below average. With a normal distribution, the majority of workers are slightly above average or worse (Empirical Rule, +1 standard deviation from the mean and worse equals ~85% of the population). It is true that morality aside, it makes hard sense to coddle the people who are +2 and +3 SD above the norm. It also makes hard sense to cut loose the bottom half whenever they need anything more from you than air. Which is where government comes in, to ameliorate the effects of a rational market.
Actually, it was Richard Bellamy, not I, who wrote the part about congressional legislation of labor laws. (Though if you want my opinion, I think there’s a grain of truth in both. Union agitation and changes in the composition/attitudes of Congress aren’t entirely unrelated.)
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oops! sorry for that Julian! need to remember not to post before going to bed….
anyhoo, i agree with you that Union agitation and changes in the composition/attitudes of Congress aren’t entirely unrelated.
it’s just that one came first. i’m just tired of always hearing civil rights & labor rights, etc., being attributed to the initiative of our benevolent rulers. Congress has rarely been at the forefront of social progress.
He is expressing a statistical truth. By definition, half of all workers are below average.
average what? competence? intelligence? shoe size?
Which is where government comes in, to ameliorate the effects of a rational market.
the “rational market”? do you have any evidence of this mythical beastie? or are you just expressing a theoretical hypothesis? you’re not really saying that employers operate exclusively or even primarily according to rational principles, are you? and do you really believe the actual function of government is to protect people from the voraciousness of the RatMarket?
and, btw, with all this talk of subaverage employees & what a burden they are, why aren’t such delightful statistical models being applied to employers? after all, if the world operates according to your model then most employers are slightly above average or worse. and if so, then their capability to think and act rationally must be about the same.
lastly, could perhaps this phenomenon of workers performing at subaverage levels maybe have something to do with apathy, lack of motivation, general contempt, etc.? many employers offer their workers fuckall in the way of either material, emotional or social benefits. why should i bust my ass for some guy who’s going to can me the minute i inconvenience him? if he’s only going to look out for #1 can you think of a reason why i shouldn’t as well?
of course, there are alternatives…. the whole employer/employee, worker/boss dichotomy is hardly the only model of getting things done.
Going off-topic for one moment longer:
Kim, you might want to talk to ICAN, the International Cesarean Awareness Network. They have chapters all over, and I saw on their web site that they have a contact person in Portland.
In general, they are very strongly pro-VBAC, so if you haven’t made your decision yet, they might come across as a bit preachy. But they would probably be a good source of information about VBAC-friendly doctors (or midwives, if you have an interest in that).
He is expressing a statistical truth. By definition, half of all workers are below average.
average what? competence? intelligence? shoe size?
I mean “average quality worker”. Average competence, productivity, etc. If the job is running the cash register, then it doesn’t really matter how smart the employee is — just whether he’s smart and competent enough to run to cash register. Employers have to fill enough open slots to know what jobs are easy to fill and which are hard to fill. The easy to fill one are the ones they are willing to deal with the least crap.
I don’t deal with theoretical constructs, like “the market” or “the economy.” I deal with people. I work in a small town, so I’m not generally dealing with “big business” or anything like that. Sometimes they are people who have been fired in violation of the law. I help them get what they are legally entitled to. They are mostly easy cases where, for example, the employer will come out and say, “I fired her because she applied for workers’ comp. benefits.” They don’t realize this is illegal. Then, we make a lot of money.
Sometimes they are employers who are being hit especially hard by regulations — as I wrote about above — or lawsuits for which they are not guilty (none of my clients are firing people in violation of the law, because I counsel them that they are not allowed to, and they contact me whenever they want to fire someone.) Then, there are actual, demonstrable costs, such as the cost of paying me, or the cost of a temporary replacement.
I have no idea whether, to society as a whole, the cost (to employees) of employment-at-will is more or less than the cost (to employers) of requirements that certain terminations be “for cause”. But there are definitely costs to either choice, and I think that the society that picks which side will be the “winner” has an obligation to soften the blow to the “loser”.
average what? competence? intelligence? shoe size?
Average whatever is being measured.
the “rational market”? do you have any evidence of this mythical beastie? or are you just expressing a theoretical hypothesis? you’re not really saying that employers operate exclusively or even primarily according to rational principles, are you? and do you really believe the actual function of government is to protect people from the voraciousness of the RatMarket?
I generally use reason in making decisions, along with nonrational factors. I assume that other people are capable of the same level of cognition. For example, I assume that if a person is offered the choice of a return of 5% from an investment, or 10%, then ceteris parabus they will take the 10%.
There are employers who act entirely or primarily irrationally. I have seen a few of those employers first-hand. They generally go out of business fairly quickly. Refusing to act rationally is generally not compatible with survival.
The primary role of government is to protect individuals against force and fraud. However, for humanitarian and practical reasons there is a fairly broad consensus, to which I subscribe, that it is legitimate for the government to restrict a narrow range of transactions that are economically sensible but socially destructive.
why aren’t such delightful statistical models being applied to employers?
Because the thread is discussing discrimination by employers, not choices by employees.
Robert writes: The primary role of government is to protect individuals against force and fraud.
ok, if that’s your sincere belief, perhaps the rest somehow follows. i completely disagree that this is the primary or actual role of government. but, then again i find the idea that the market operates according to rational principles to be completely at odds with my experience & knowledge of the world. go figure.
I assume that if a person is offered the choice of a return of 5% from an investment, or 10%, then ceteris parabus they will take the 10%.
neato, Latin! one might point out that ceteris parabus (“all things being equal,” right?) is a nice notion, but rarely applies to the real world.
There are employers who act entirely or primarily irrationally. I have seen a few of those employers first-hand. They generally go out of business fairly quickly. Refusing to act rationally is generally not compatible with survival.
i think i’d be alot more convinced of this idea of prevailing rationality if you could provide something a little more concrete than anecdotal evidence. not to mention that to accept this whole idea of the rational market would seem to me to lead one to have to accept the conclusion that those who are successful in business are somehow the most “rational” members of society. i personally find this more than a little implausible (not to mention entirely ahistorical). do you believe this, or am i jumping to conclusions?
Because the thread is discussing discrimination by employers, not choices by employees.
sorry. how silly of me to think the choices employees make are actually relevant to discrimination by employers. but hey, who cares what the workers think anyways? well, since that’s out of bounds, i confess i’ve run out of questions.
cheers!
i completely disagree that this is the primary or actual role of government.
What do you think its primary role is?
not to mention that to accept this whole idea of the rational market would seem to me to lead one to have to accept the conclusion that those who are successful in business are somehow the most “rational”? members of society. i personally find this more than a little implausible (not to mention entirely ahistorical). do you believe this, or am i jumping to conclusions?
Conclusions. Golf rewards dexterity. The most dextrous person in our society is not likely the best golfer. It’s a contributing factor, not a deciding factor.
What do you think its primary role is?
well, that would be off topic, now wouldn’t it? maybe if Ampersand starts up a thread on the primary role of government i’ll let you in on my wildeyed ideas concerning the fiendish powers-that-be…
which i’m sure you’re just dying to hear. ;)
Wolfangel:
This seems to be about “wow, let’s keep her out of travel so she doesn’t need to worry about daycare”. I will not argue about whether there are other reasons for her to be not given those responsibilities ““ you’ve listed them, and I have no reason to doubt them. But those reasons (lack of experience, frequent changing of plans, need in a current local project, and so on) are sufficient without bringing in some “plus, it’ll just be easier on her baby”? argument, which is what that initial comment was.
I thought I had also mentioned she had unreliable day-care arrangements which added concern to increasing her travel to 80% – which was my strictly professional concern.
My personal concerns about her and the new baby, and letting her travel less was the admitted, personal concern about the stress, and the fact all of my employees had complained about the lack of respect for work/life balance and preferring to work 9-5 on most days (the latter is impossible when you’re traveling at least 80% for 3 months straight).
She and I discussed the situation again today and I made it clear that I’m not preventing her from tasks requiring travel (she’ll be on the road about 50% of the time for the next 2 months), I’m making sure her travel is for the things she needs to gain experience in.
The problem with accepting the “I can do this, it’s not a problem” statement is the fact, once someone gets into it and sees how different it is from prior to having a family – they frequently get frustrated quickly and start complaining. The reason I even brought it up is because sometimes an employer can’t win for losing – some get angry when you try to accommodate and some get mad when you don’t automatically accommodate (even when you can’t). The employer is hurt when someone who thinks they can handle it can’t, so you have to walk a fine line.
Ol’ Cranky,
Are any of your employee’s new fathers (or semi-new, as she is), and do you have the same sorts of concerns about them? The other reasons you’ve stated as her not getting the position are all legitimate and genderless, but the daycare one really smacks hard of sexism, in so much as it automatically assumes that she’s the only one capable of making daycare arrangements. If it’s an ongoing problem of daycare then that seems like something that you need to maybe tell her to work on fixing with her spouse so it doesn’t affect her job with any regularity (like getting sick, sometimes daycare issues are going to happen and it’s not unreasonable to expect occassional, but not frequent accomodation for such).
Out of curiousity, what is unreliable daycare in your estimation? How is it affecting her work?
I had a baby 8 years ago, and the way my company (large, national communications company) handled my leave time was this: after you used up all your accumulated leave, and I was able to take 16 weeks because I had short term diasability insurance that paid me for 12 weeks, 2 weeks vacation, and 2 weeks unpaid FMLA. I had to return to work for at least 3 months for my insurance costs to be paid. I thought that was a fair way to handle it. If I decided to stay home (which I couldn’t afford to do, I was a new homeowner and my husband and I don’t make tons of money), I would have had to pay my hospital bills myself.
Considering the fact that women don’t get paid as much, we don’t get promoted as much, and we often have opportunities that are closed off from us, it’s really unsporting to suggest that we should be further punished for doing our part to continue the existence of our entire species. For employers, they should remember – we’re not just adding a son or daughter, we’re adding a future customer.
For example, I assume that if a person is offered the choice of a return of 5% from an investment, or 10%, then ceteris parabus they will take the 10%.
Didn’t a couple of economists just win a Nobel Prize showing that people do not act ‘rationally’ as we expect in all circumstances?
Companies will refrain from acting irrationally when they see the effects of irrational behavior. If a whole group of employers all have the same family-hostile hiring policies, there simply is not going to be another employer who hires all that brilliant-but-busy talent and eats their lunch.
Of course employee choice is affected by employers’ policies. If you know that a company is going to require you to work 90-hour weeks, why apply there if you plan to see your kids once in a while? If you don’t have kids, are you going to rush out and have them knowing that you will lose your job if you only work a 65-hour week?
Companies will refrain from acting irrationally when they see the effects of irrational behavior. If a whole group of employers all have the same family-hostile hiring policies, there simply is not going to be another employer who hires all that brilliant-but-busy talent and eats their lunch.
Why not?
People with your views hold capital, both human and material. Many of you own businesses already.
If there is a vast pool of people whose economic return to a hiring firm substantially exceeds their market value – for whatever reason – then that does represent a genuine business opportunity for someone who does not share the thinking behind the disciminatory behavior.
The fact that “nobody would see” and thus develop this talent pool, as you say, does not seem to be an operative presumption. You see it. I see it. It is reasonable to suppose that there are other people who are smart as you. If this opportunity exists, then it would seem to be a nearly risk-free way of earning an honest return on capital – by joining forces or hiring the discriminated-against and creating wealth together.
Why not?
Because I’m not arguing “nobody would see it.” What the discriminatory companies are seeing is that they are doing pretty damn well relying on the methods they have now, that nobody IS snapping up all this talent and kicking their butts, and frankly, that they prefer the situation they have now to whatever increased profit and success they might have through tapping that vast pool.
You’re also assuming perfect information–that BigCO is going to notice SmallCo is doing very well, and will say “Geez, SmallCo hired all these women and they have family-friendly policies and they’re taking the market by storm–perhaps we should do the same?”
And to be honest, you’re also assuming rationality; that the human beings of BigCo are willing to grind their teeth and deal with pregnant women in the office if it means more bucks. I will tell you from experience that many employers would, irrationally, much prefer to stick to making bajillions of dollars (rather than bajillions and bajillions) rather than alter their personal comfort levels.
I suspect it also depends on the nature of the company. In a publicly-traded company, the pressure to make profits, period, is higher than at a private company or a partnership.
I’m not arguing that the existing companies should see the opportunities and change their policies. (They should, but that’s not what I’m arguing.)
I’m arguing that the opportunity exists in potentia for other business people, other companies. You, for example, could form a consortium with other friends and take advantage of FREE MONEY, if your view is accurate.
And yet, you’re not doing that. Fine, somebody with cultural blinders and comfort level issues is missing an opportunity. Too bad for them. It’s raining soup; if what you say is the situation is actually the situation, then all you (as an enlightened and comfortable person) need do is stick out a bucket.
Why haven’t you?
Kim, if you are still reading, I am also pregnant, but in a place where VBAC is still encouraged, also, I’ve already done one without incident. I have resources for you to give to your doctor that shows that VBAC is actually less risky than repeat cesarean. And if it comes down to it, (I’ve thought alot about this), you can simply not show up until your labor is advanced. At any rate there’s a book by an author named Henci Goer (think that’s it) that exhaustively collected and analyzed research on this and other stupid obstetric practices that derive from the believe that science must be better than nature. Even if you sign a consent now, you can retract it on your way into the hospital. Just hand your ob the notarized document that bears your signature and that of your partner stating that you do not consent to a cesarean in the absence of medical emergency and that your prior consent has been withdrawn. There’s not a fucking thing they can do about it. EMTALA requires that a hospital treat all women in active labor even the uppity ugly ones that stand up for themselves. Good luck.
You, for example, could form a consortium with other friends and take advantage of FREE MONEY, if your view is accurate.
What FREE MONEY? There is no such thing. It’s a cute rhetorical shift to ask why I don’t find an investment coalition and sink millions into starting my own law firm in a saturated market, but it’s a noticeable shift. So:
I’m not arguing that the existing companies should see the opportunities and change their policies.
No, you’re arguing that a company that is nondiscriminatory will snap up all this talent and outdo the discriminatory ones. (The dark side of this argument, which I assume you are not making, is that clearly there *aren’t* all that many talented women out there, because if they did exist UpstartCo would have hired them all and kicked ass and taken names on Wall Street.)
I’m not sure I can explain this in econospeak, but I’ll try: when you have enough competition in a market, a company can afford to discriminate. That is, if BigCo has ten jobs and two thousand people competing for that job, they can afford to discriminate and still get ten top people. So UpstartCo, which snaps up ten people who are as or more qualified than the ten new BigCo hires, is not going to have such an advantage that BigCo will notice or care. BigCo would have to perceive that its discrimination actually hurts its performance, and decide that the performance hit is worse than changing its attitude about whom it hires, promotes and retains.
Interestingly, here in the SF Bay there are law firms that don’t care if you’re black, white, female, Martian, whatever, as long as you put in 90-hour weeks. So their entry-level employee band looks very diverse. Of course, as you get into the upper ranks, it tends to get more and more white and male. If it’s hurt their top rankings, they haven’t noticed.
So UpstartCo, which snaps up ten people who are as or more qualified than the ten new BigCo hires, is not going to have such an advantage that BigCo will notice or care.
Who says that BigCo has to notice or care? UpstartCo’s results are what matter economically – not whether some other company sees the consequences of their own behavior.
It’s a cute rhetorical shift to ask why I don’t find an investment coalition and sink millions into starting my own law firm in a saturated market…
If the market is saturated (with law firms) then competition among firms must be at white-hot intensity. Odd that everyone continues to discriminate, when not discriminating would give them such an edge.
What FREE MONEY? There is no such thing…
If there is no free money, then your view of the discrimination problem cannot be accurate. Either there is no discrimination at all (which I find highly unlikely on the basis of personal experience) or there is discrimination but it is taking other forms than what you are claiming as reality. I find this latter possibility most likely.
Who says that BigCo has to notice or care?
Exactly my point. And as long as BigCo’s owners are satisfied, rather than asking “Why aren’t you making as much money as UpstartCo?” then the idea that they will, acting rationally in their economic self-interest, imitate UpstartCo is incorrect.
You’re proceeding from the assumption that the level of discrimination is such that UpstartCo will snap up all this underpaid talent and get the same return out of it that BigCo will. That works in the utopian economic universe; not so much in real life.
It is also the case that BigCo may decide that the slight ‘edge’ it would get from refusing to discriminate is not preferable to the social or economic advantage it gets from continuing to do so. For example, perhaps BigCo’s clients prefer a WASP-y, all-male accounting firm, so BigCo believes it will come out ahead economically even if they lose some talent. Or BigCo’s executives would rather the company take the performance and pay hit.
If there is free money, then your view of the discrimination problem cannot be accurate. Either there is no discrimination at all, or there is discrimination but the companies that practice it will shortly go under because their smarter, non-discriminatory competition will crush them simply by picking up free money.
DIS’ CRIME IN (our) NATION
ENDING EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION?!?!
Any more Celebs available for Flag Football benefiting our ‘RBMD’ (Race Based Employment Discrimination) Fund?
Let’s end Regular & the more common actions of ‘Pervasive’ Race Based Employment discrimination. Let’s address it and work towards ending it and have some fun in the process.
a). This may not be a popular cause but it’s one that truly requires attention.
b). This is not the type of thing your ‘Pub’ would generally allow you to show up for however, think about it.
Read the EEOC, Supreme Court Findings and other Facts for yourself:
http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Careers/articles/hicks_discrimination_suits_soar.asp
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Job-Bias-Plaintiffs.htm
In PA: http://www.courts.state.pa.us/Index/Supreme/BiasCmte/FinalReport.pdf
If you can not Play to add to the funds to assist Law Abiding Citizen Fight this ‘Under the Rug’ problem then we simply ask that you contact your local media outlets and demand that they report and treat this ‘ON-GOING’ Federal Crime as note worthy or News worthy.
We want and need cases Reported on just as the Various News Media would any other crime. Once we Tag & Track those who regularly & pervasively engage in this crime (Like some sort of SICK impulse) we can get a more aggressive handle on it as to really address it. We fear, the same people are engaging in it then move on to greener pastures and start over again.
In 2006, Football Gave us a perfect example of how BIAS can be engaged in PERVASIVELY.
KEY FACTORS as the back-drop:
Conventional thinking (Usually meaning- American White Males) is that, the Pocket QB is of far more value than a Mobile (Usually, although not recently, targeted against the Black QB)
The entire Football Nation witnessed an attempt to secure that belief. In a game that Matched Pittsburgh against Indianapolis- a referee not only makes the wrong call, which, initially could happen, but upon review, the Ref confers with others and in what can only be describe as ‘The Conspiracy To Secure a Doomed Hypothesis’ a Group of individuals decided to engage in the biggest and most obvious act of Pervasively Engaged Upon BIAS in the history of our nations love of the game of football.
Wait- I know most people have been trained to hate the word ‘Conspiracy’ however, upon looking the word up one realizes why most of us have been conditioned to hate the words… It clearly and Concisely diagnosis and explains the actions of an individual, in concert with others, causing a negative outcome. Notice, even explaining requires to much verbiage. It’s easier to simply call it what it was- An act of Conspiracy, designed to give a dying view a chance in the BIG GAME!
After further review- Guys conferred and attempted to SCKEW the State of Pittsburgh, Mobile QB’s, Fans of Fair Play, The entire argument over which is better, a Pocket or Mobile QB and everyone else who had never seen an act of Pervasive/Sneaky BIAS played out. You have been treated to a glimpse of what those fighting Race Related Employment Discrimination fight against- ALL THE TIME!
Science has made one thing crystal clear, regarding willingness to understand… Those who want to WILL, those who DON’T, WON’T. We shall not waste our time with those interested in Verbal Sport and/or Confusion. The Facts are self explanatory.
Thanks for your time.
Mhanly.
PS.
We are attempting a more relaxed way of dealing with a matter that’s quietly reverting back to becoming a mounting problem!
The Rap/Hip Hop Nation has the POWER to address this problem with VOICE, POWER & MONEY-MOVES. If you don’t know what Money-Moves Mean— enough said!
The right combination of WORD along with the right combination of PEOPLE brings about the RIGHT CHANGES!
To, we need more software developers to address this reoccurring and growing matter.
After all this time there is only ONE program to address this matter.
(http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16040) connect to:
(http://uqqn.com/redn.html)
I have been recently been let go from my job and I am 6 months pregnant. I am a Professional Recruiter for Manpower Professional (IT, Engineering, Finance) and my sales numbers have increased dramatically over the past 4 months. I am ranked #28 out if 96 Recruiters in the nation for the professional division. The other recruiter in my office is ranked #41. Needless to say my performance has not decreased or slowed down.
I was told last last week that it was time to part ways due to inconsistency of being in the office. I obviously disagree and believe that my “new” manager is discriminating against me being pregnant and doesn’t want me to be out of the office for maternity leave. I was out of the office for 6 days in April. I got married and took a long weekend, I then developed a pregnacy rash all over and was written out until the dermatologist could see me. I have documentation of all of these dates and after being questioned numerous times about my plans after the baby and my child-rearing plans I have no other choice than to believe that she has discriminated against me and may feel threatened as well.
I am pursuing all avenues to get my job back and prove that she has been unfair and has not treated me equal to others in the office .