Fair Labor Standards

Enforcement Guidance:
Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities
EEOC, May 07. The first formal enforcement guidelines covering Family Responsibilities Discrimination. Although the guidelines explain that federal law and most states do not specifically prohibit employment discrimination against caregivers, the document provides definitions, guidelines for evaluation and various examples of circumstances in which "discrimination against caregivers might constitute unlawful disparate treatment" under existing statutes. Full guidelines in HTML

Litigating the Maternal Wall: U.S. Lawsuits Charging Discrimination
Against Workers with Family Responsibilities
Mary C. Still, Center for WorkLife Law, Jul 06. Discrimination against family caregivers can be blatant – as when employees are told "You can’t be a mother and a good employee" -- or subtle, as when employers assume a worker would not want to move for a promotion because of caring responsibilities. The report finds that a growing number of workers who experience "family responsibilities discrimination" (FRD, pronounced "fred") are bringing lawsuits against their employers, and these cases appear to be more successful than most other types of employer bias cases.
Full report.

The naked truth about comp time— Current proposal
is like emperor's new clothes: there's nothing there for workers
By Ross Eisenbrey, The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org), Mar 2003. “The FLSA establishes a monetary disincentive for employers to work their employees more than 40 hours a week. For two-thirds of a century, this system has struck a successful balance by giving employers a way to get work done at a fair price in times of overload while at the same protecting employees’ time with their families. …The compensatory, or “comp,” time bill (H.R. 1119) proposed by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) would upset that balance by eroding protections for workers’ rights and creating a strong financial incentive for employers to lengthen the workweek.” Issue brief in HTML

Another way for business to abuse workers
By Ross Eisenbrey, The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org). May 2003. “To improve living standards, working families really need three things: more income, fewer work hours and more regular schedules. This ‘Family Time Flexibility Act’ fails on all three counts.” Op-ed in HTML

Family Friend or Foe?: Working Time, Flexibility,
and the Fair Labor Standards Act
By Lonnie Golden, The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org). 1997. “Revisions to the FLSA that would replace overtime pay with comp time and supplant the 40-hour work week with an 80-hour, two-week standard would exacerbate problems of rising hours and poorly distributed work time. Such revisions will undoubtedly result in fewer jobs, longer work days, and hampered productivity, and will make it exceedingly difficult for workers to balance competing demands on their time.” 24 pages, in PDF

Time After Time:
Mandatory overtime in the U.S. economy
by Lonnie Golden and Helene Jorgensen, The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org). 2002 “The growth in overtime work, while helping to drive the healthy growth in output in the U.S., has unhealthy social costs. It is taking its toll not only on workers, but on their families, communities, and, ultimately in many cases, patients, customers, and employers. Families burdened by longer work hours are more likely to find it difficult to balance the conflicting demands of work and family.” Briefing paper, 18 pages, in PDF

Minimum Wage Issue Guide
The Economic Policy Institute (www.epi.org)
Fact sheets, tables and graphics, issue briefs and commentary. Index in PDF

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Pay & Pension Equity

National Committee on Pay Equity (www.pay-equity.org)
Resources and fact sheets on equal pay for women. Index in HTML

Equal Pay
The Center for Policy Alternatives (www.cfpa.org). The gender wage gap alone results in an average annual loss of more than $4,000 per American family. If married women were paid the same as men doing comparable work, their family incomes would rise and their family poverty rates would fall. If single working mothers earned as much as men doing comparable work, their family poverty rates would be cut in half.
Index to resources.

Women Still Underrepresented Among Highest Earners
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mar 06. Examines trends in women's earnings. More women than men were in the lowest earnings category, and women were under-represented among the highest earners (just 30 percent of female workers are in the highest earning category). Both men and women with the lowest earnings worked in industries typically thought of as low wage -- for example, wholesale and retail trade, and leisure and hospitality. Education and health services accounted for large concentrations of both highest and lowest earning women. The highest earners were concentrated in industries including financial activities and professional and business services.
Issue brief, 2 pages in .pdf

The Working Mommy Trap
EJ Graff, TomePaine.com (www.tompaine.com), Oct 05. "The message is quite explicit: Women don’t make as much as men because they don’t want to -- so stop whining already. But this focus on women’s “choices” masks a far more profound story. The real trend isn’t choice; it’s the lack thereof. Most women have to work, because they and their families need the paycheck. But they’re also treated unfairly on the job."
In HTML.

Wage Gap for Working Mothers May Cost Billions
Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Chait Barnett, Womens eNews (www.womensenews.org), Aug 2000."New studies indicate that while wage gaps between women and men in entry-level jobs are slight, working mothers are paid 70 cents for every dollar that men receive. For childless women, the gap is 10 cents on the dollar." Full article in HTML

Celebrating a Happy Equal Pay Day? Not Likely
Joan Williams, Women’s eNews (www.womensenews.org). Apr 02. “Wage gaps, glass ceilings and maternal walls--with the resulting lower pay and smaller pensions--still hold sway over women's working lives.” Commentary in HTML

Doing the Math on Earnings Inequality
Judith Stadtman Tucke, Mothers Movement Online (www.mothersmovement.org). Jun 04. “By comparing the range of low, median and high level earnings for men and women in over 500 specific occupations, authors of a recent Census Bureau report found that with very few exceptions, men make more money than women in the same occupations at all points in the earnings spectrum— from 23 percent more at the lower range of earnings to 54 percent more at the upper end of the pay scale.” Links to census report and original tables comparing men’s and women’s earnings in selected occupation. Full article in HTML

Still a Man’s Labor Market: The Long-Term Earnings Gap
Stephen J. Rose and Heidi I. Hartmann for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (www.iwpr.org). Jun 04. The study finds that when men’s and women’s average earnings are compared over a 15 year period, women in their prime earning years make only 38 cents for every dollar men earn and concludes that systemic, cultural and behavioral factors contributing to the long-term gap in men’s and women’s earnings are complicated and difficult to separate. “Discriminatory treatment of women in the labor market (in hiring, working conditions, promotion, or pay) or in labor market preparation (access to training and education, for example) is certainly important. Some of the difference is due to unequal social norms at home and at work, and some is due to preferential choices women and men make about work and home issues.” Full report, 60 pages in PDF

The Gender Wage Ratio: Women’s and Men’s Earnings
Institute for Women’s Policy Research (www.iwpr.org). Oct 01. IWPR Publication #C350.“The gender wage ratio, which had remained virtually constant from 1955 through the 1970s, began to increase in the 1980s. For full-time year-round workers, the ratio of women’s median annual earnings to men’s increased gradually over the 1980s, reaching 71.6 in 1990. Over the 1990s, the wage ratio moved up and down slightly, peaking at 74.2 in 1997 and then falling to 73.3 by 2000… The ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly earnings rose from 62.3 in 1970 to 76.8 in 1993 and has stayed in the range of 74.4 to 76.5 since then. In 2000, the ratio was 76.0.” Issue brief in PDF

The Gender Gap in Pension Coverage: What Does the Future Hold?
Lois Shaw, PhD and Catherine Hill, PhD. Institute for Women’s Policy Research (www.iwpr.org), May 02. “This study has a number of implications for public policy. Overall, these findings suggest that extending pension coverage to part-time workers and lowering vesting periods should be at the center of a women’s agenda for federal pension policy.” Issue brief in PDF

Low Wages Prevalent In Direct Care and Child Care Workforce
Kristin Smith and Reagan Baughman, Carsey Institute, Summer 2007. In 2005, 2.7 million Americans were employed in the direct care and child care workforce. The study finds that workers in two fast growing care giving occupations -- direct care workers (personal care assistants, home care aides, home health aides, and certified nursing assistants) and child care workers generally receive low pay and lack health insurance, and both occupations experience high levels of turnover. 89 percent of direct care workers, and 97 percent of child care workers, are women. Summary sheet, 2 pages in .pdf; Policy Brief, 12 pages in .pdf

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