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From
the May 2004 edition:
Court
rules employers can’t assume mothers
are less committed to their jobs
On April 7, a federal court of appeals ruled in favor of an employed
mother who is suing her employer for discrimination because she was repeatedly
told that she could not be a mother and do her job well. Legal experts
believe the ruling may make it easier for similar cases to be tried in
the future. According to Cynthia Calvert, an employment attorney and
deputy director of the Program on WorkLife
Law at American University Washington College of Law, “employees
who are also caregivers and have been stymied in their careers have begun
to sue their employers. With each new case, it becomes more clear how
to do so successfully.”
More
information and a
press release on the case are available on the Program
on WorkLife Law Web site: www.worklifelaw.org
CBS Evening News Report: Fighting
Maternal Discrimination (11/13/2002)
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New
reports track national trends
in paid leave, sick leave, child care
1. According
to a new report from the Institute
for Women’s Policy Research (www.iwpr.org),
86 million U.S. workers lack paid sick leave to care for sick
kids. Using an analysis of data from the U.S. Department of
Labor, No Time to be Sick:
Why Everyone Suffers When Workers Don’t Have Paid Sick
Leave found that employees in medium
and large private establishments were significantly less likely
to have paid sick leave coverage in 1997 than they were in
1986, and that workers in the private sector, non-union workers
and part-time employees were less likely to have paid sick
leave than other workers. Only 16 percent of part time workers
had paid sick-leave coverage, compared to 60% of full-time
workers, and fewer than 1 out of 3 of all employees with paid
sick leave coverage are permitted to use sick leave for medical
appointments or to care for a sick child.
May 5, 2004 Press
Release from IWPR:
Businesses
And Families Suffer Without Paid Sick Leave:
New Report Finds that Half of All Workers
Do Not Have Paid Sick Leave
(in .pdf)
No
Time to be Sick:
Why Everyone Suffers When Workers Don’t Have Paid Sick Leave
By Vicki Lovell, Ph.D. for the Institute for
Women’s Policy Research, May 2004
(in .pdf)
—————————
2. The
Urban Institute (www.urban.org)
recently published a report on working parents’ access
to paid and unpaid leave. Getting
Time Off: Access to Leave Among Working Parents uses
new data from the National Survey of American Families
to chart the employment and demographic characteristics
of parents with and without access to leave. The study
finds that:
– Women
are less likely than men to have any paid leave (including
vacation days, sick leave, personal days and other forms of
paid leave), and among working parents with access to paid
leave women are more likely to have only one workweek or less
of paid leave, while men are more likely to have more than
three workweeks of leave.
– Workers
with a great need for leave— parents with very young
children— are the least likely to have it.
– Single
parents are less likely than married parents to have any access
to paid leave: married parents are more likely to have access
to more than three workweeks of paid leave, while single parents
are more likely to have one workweek or less.
– Part-time
workers and workers with fewer years on their current jobs
are less likely to have any paid leave.
– More
than half of poor workers, working welfare recipients and workers
who recently left welfare cannot take paid leave from their
jobs.
Getting
Time Off: Access to Leave Among Working Parents
Katherin Ross Phillips, The Urban Institute, April 2004
Related
article from Women’s eNews (www.womensenew.org):
Paid
Sick Leave is Rare for Low-Income Women
By Marianne Sullivan, run date 4/29/04
—————————
3. The
Center for Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net)
released a report on working mother’s use and access
to child care. Of all working mothers with children under
six, 90 percent reported using some kind of child care.
The study finds that while child care is a problem for
all working mothers, lower income mothers face the greatest
difficulties in securing adequate child care. In 2001,
working mothers who depended on non-familial child care
were most likely to use formal, center-based care. While
the average weekly cost of child care per child in the
most affluent households is between 4.5 and 6 percent
of household income, weekly expenditures on child care
per child in the poorest households are between 12 and
18 percent of household income.
Working
Moms and Child Care
Heather Boushey and Joseph Wright, Center for Economic and Policy Research,
May 5, 2004
Executive
Summary
Full
report in .pdf
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Government
removes data on working women
from DOL Web site
A new report from the National Council
for Research on Women (www.ncrw.org)
details how information related to women’s health, jobs, and violence
against women has been altered, removed from circulation, or withheld
from the public by U.S. government agencies. More than two dozen publications
and fact sheets, including a handbook explaining women’s rights
in the workplace, fact sheets on child care best practices and equal
pay, and statistical reports comparing women’s earnings to men’s
over a 20 year period have been pulled from the Department of Labor’s
Women’s Bureau Web site.
New or remaining are
publications on the site include fact sheets covering such
optimistic topics as “Hot Jobs for the 20th Century” and “Women
in High Tech Jobs.” The NCRW’s Missing:
Information About Women’s Lives strongly
suggests the pattern of withholding and altering new and existing
information on issues that affect women's lives is politically
motivated and partisan in nature.
The documents removed
from the Women’s Bureau Web site, which highlighted trends
in women’s workforce participation, occupations and wages,
were especially useful for equal pay advocates and journalists
covering work/life issues. The NCRW has launched a project
to retrieve the missing information from other sources.
April
28, 2004 Press Release from
the National Council for Research on Women:
Report
Documents Disturbing Pattern of Vital Information
Important to Girls and Women Disappearing (in
.pdf)
Missing:
Information About Women’s Lives
Executive
Summary (in. pdf)
Full
report (in .pdf)
On
Salon.com:
Making
Women’s Issues Go Away
By Rebecca Traister, April 28, 2004
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The
uncertain future of overtime pay
On April 20, the Bush administration released the final version of new
regulations determining which employees are eligible for overtime pay.
Even though some of the more controversial elements of the proposed changes
were modified prior to the final release, critics insist that if enforced,
the new rules—which revise guidelines for legal exemptions for
overtime pay for executives, professionals and administrative employees—would
mean longer hours and less pay for millions of American workers. The
rulings would allow employers to classify non-degreed workers as “professionals” as
long as they have “substantially similar” knowledge and do
substantially similar tasks. Among those who might loose their right
to overtime pay under the new standards are nursery school and pre-school
teachers. According to an analysis by Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic
Policy Institute (www.epinet.org),
under the new regulations not only would millions of workers who are
currently eligible for overtime pay become exempt, but the ambiguity
of new definitions for exempt and non-exempt employees guarantees an “explosion” of
litigation—an outcome the revisions were intended to minimize.
According the New
York Times, the Senate voted 52 to 47 on May 4 to block
regulations denying overtime pay to any worker now qualified
to receive it. The AFL-CIO (www.aflcio.org),
which has launched an aggressive grass-roots write-in campaign
to protect overtime pay, reports that House Republicans have
refused to allow a debate or vote on a motion that would
protect overtime pay for workers who will be exempt under
the new rules. Unless Congress blocks the new regulations,
employers will be free to implement them as of August 23.
More
information from the Economic Policy
Institute:
Fair
Pay Fact:
The Department of Labor’s Misrepresentations About Its Overtime
Rule
Ross Eisenbrey, Economic Policy Institute, May 11, 2004
Saying
goodbye to overtime checks
By Ross Eisenbrey, Economic Policy Institute, May 11, 2004
Economic Policy Institute, March 21, 2004
AFL-CIO
Working America
Campaign to Save Overtime Pay
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Wall
Street Journal to re-entry moms:
Unhappy Mother’s Day!
Just in time for Mother’s Day, the Wall
Street Journal handed a big fat reality check
to mothers hoping to re-start their careers after years of full-time
child rearing. The page one article (“After
Years Off, Women Struggle To Revive Careers” by
WSJ staff reporters Anne Marie Chalker and Hillary Stout, May 6, 2004)
describes the difficulties these re-entry professionals face just trying
to get their foot in the door, let alone a good job offer. The article
quotes the top executive of a company that matches woman job seekers
with recruiters:
If an
employer uses the criteria ‘We will hire the best person
for the job,’ I think it’s very difficult to choose
someone who’s been out of the workforce that long.’ Appplicants
sometimes point to their volunteer work, or experience as ‘head
of the household… the woman who does everything.’ …The
theory of it sounds really great, but the reality is it’s
very difficult.”
But
you already knew that, right?
The Wall
Street Journal does not provide access to online content
to non-subscribers, so check your local library— or
better yet, sneak a peek at this blogged
.pdf copy of the article.
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Not
new, but newly discovered:
Center for Advancement of Women’s
report on women’s attitudes about motherhood,
work and the women’s movement
In June 2003, The
Center for the Advancement of Women (www.advancewomen.org)
published the results of a two-year study of women’s political
priorities and personal outlooks on work and family. The study
found that 6 out 10 women believe there is a need for a revitalized
movement that will “push for changes that will benefit
women,” including reducing violence against women, equal
pay and child care. The report— which also tracks women’s
opinions about motherhood and work— found that 90 percent
of more than 3,000 women surveyed agreed that it’s possible
for a woman to have a career and be a good mother at the same
time. And while women were most likely to identify “motherhood” as
the most important aspect of their sense of self, 7 out of 10
agreed that becoming a mother is not necessary to have a complete
life.
Progress
and Perils: New Agenda for Women
Executive
Summary (.pdf)
Full
reports
— MMO,
May 2004
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Previously
in MMO Noteworthy ... |
