Business – Page 4

New York Expected to Extend Protections to Domestic Workers

This is great news. The bill that New York is considering also protects workers who are undocumented, and requires a series of basic workplace protections:

The State Senate this week passed a bill that would require paid holidays, sick days and vacation days for domestic workers, along with overtime wages. It would require 14 days’ notice, or termination pay, before firing a domestic worker.

The Assembly passed a similar measure last year, and lawmakers expect that the two versions will be reconciled and that Gov. David A. Paterson will sign what they say would be the nation’s first such protections for domestic workers. It would affect an estimated 200,000 workers in the metropolitan area: citizens, legal immigrants and those here illegally as well.

This is long overdue, and it’s a shame that New York is the first state to pass legislation like this (assuming it’s signed, which it looks like it will be). There is some question as to whether it will actually help undocumented workers, who may be hesitant to report violations, but it is a step in the right direction. And other types of workers in New York — deliverymen, grocery store employees — have successfully challenged workplace violations, even where some of the individuals were not here legally.

The bill will also give workers more negotiating power, and will help people who hire domestic workers to parse out what is fair and what isn’t.

But for nannies and parents alike, the legislation, if enacted, could well create a kind of baseline for negotiations over pay, hours and benefits. Now, the dealings typically leave both sides unsure of what is fair, and in the end, employers sometimes feeling guilty and employees feeling shortchanged.

“We are really looking toward healing the divide between employee and employee,” said Sara Fields, program director at the advocacy group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

Boycotting Arizona

This is not at terrible idea.

A spreading call for an economic boycott of Arizona after its adoption of a tough immigration law that opponents consider racially discriminatory worried business leaders on Monday and angered the governor.

Several immigrant advocates and civil rights groups, joined by members of the San Francisco government, said the state should pay economic consequences for the new law, which gives the police broad power to detain people they reasonably suspect are illegal immigrants and arrest them on state charges if they do not have legal status.

Critics say the law will lead to widespread ethnic and racial profiling and will be used to harass legal residents and Latino citizens.

La Opinión, the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, urged a boycott in an editorial Monday, as did the Rev. Al Sharpton, and calls for such action spread to social media sites. The San Francisco city attorney and members of the Board of Supervisors said they would propose that the city not do business with the state.

They followed the lead of Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, who had urged conventions to skip the state, though other Democrats who oppose the law, including Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, pleaded for people not to punish the entire state.

Don’t punish the entire state? I understand the argument, but perhaps the state shouldn’t be punishing Latin@s. And perhaps this — combined with a lot of immigrants leaving the state — will help Arizona to see that immigrants aren’t the enemy, and that racially profiling and marginalizing brown people has serious economic consequences.

Iceland bans strip clubs

While I like the idea of sending the message that women’s bodies aren’t for sale, I’m not sure this is the greatest way to do it. It seems less immediately problematic than outlawing paying for sex, primarily because prostitution bans drive sex work underground and put sex workers at risk. I don’t think there’s going to be an epidemic of underground strip clubs (although I’m sure there will be a few underground strip clubs), and I’m not sure that strippers will now face the kinds of immediate dangers that sex workers who sell sexual services negotiate every day.

But: Stripping, for better or worse, is one of the better-paid jobs that low-skilled (and hey, sometimes high-skilled) female workers can get. And no, it’s not a sustainable career, and it’s a job that traffics in discrimination — it’s primarily for the young, the thin, the able-bodied, etc, and once you don’t fit into that framework it’s no longer an option. But it does offer paid work that can be significantly less unpleasant than a lot of other jobs. With so many female workers relegated to a pink-collar work force that revolves around physically and emotionally intensive care work — being an elder care-taker or a nurse’s aid or a childcare worker — I can see how for some women, stripping seems a lot easier and a lot less messy and a lot less difficult and a lot more convenient. Which isn’t to say that stipping is all glitter and fun and empowerful — I’m sure for some women it is, and for most women it isn’t. Like a lot of other jobs. I’d be willing to bet that most strippers strip because it pays pretty well. Removing that option, even if it does send A Message, doesn’t seem like a great victory to me. Because, sure, dudes will be sad that they don’t get to male bond over seeing naked ladies anymore. But the ladies will be the ones who are dead broke because of it.

On the other hand — and this isn’t an argument I totally buy, but it’s a fair one — society does have an interest in regulating commerce, and in balancing a functioning economy and a productive workforce with human rights and ethical and moral imperatives. There are things that all of us could do to make a profit, but we’re not allowed to because it would impede a greater social good. I’m not supposed to make drugs in my basement or turn my apartment into a speakeasy (although I have actually considered that one) or slaughter cats on my roof and sell them for food; even though I could profit from all of those things, society has an interest in regulating them. Society also has an interest in securing the rights of women, and in not presenting women as items to be bought and sold. This isn’t just about women who work at strip clubs; it’s about social perceptions and the value of all women.

I can understand that take, and I am sympathetic to it, but at the end of the day you can’t regulate or legislate respect. You can outlaw the things that are tangibly harmful, but I’m not sure that stripping falls so clearly on that side.

Lady Gaga’s Prison-Yard Make-Out

Sady basically said everything there is to say about the Lady Gaga and Beyonce Telephone video, but I wanted to direct Feministe readers to this interview with Heather Cassils, the Lady’s prison-yard make-out partner. She has some interesting things to say not just about Gaga, but about gender and queerness — and her interpretation of the “does Lady Gaga have a dick?” rumors, and Gaga’s response, seem fairly at odds with what we’ve discussed. Her comments about her own body as a tool of subversion, and her thoughts on how to create social change by inserting yourself into the machine, particularly struck me (even if I don’t necessarily agree that the second one is entirely correct).

Check it out, it’s worth a read.

What’s wrong with skinny?

That’s what Lisa Hilton asks in the Daily Beast this week — although she’s actually asking, “What’s wrong with living off of coffee and cigarettes? Better than being fat!”

Katie Drummond over at Slant/Truth gives Hilton’s piece a great take-down, pointing out that while official eating disorder diagnosis rates may not be skyrocketing, a lot of women engage in disordered eating without having a diagnosed eating disorder. But Hilton isn’t just concerned with what she deems “hysteria” over super-skinny models; see, she’s worried that for all of our obsessing over skinny girls, we’re actually really fat. Obese, even! And don’t you know that being obese is unhealthy?

The Super Bowl and Madison Avenue Misogyny

A guest post by Kate. Kate is a freelance writer and full-time law student. Follow her @itscompliKATEd on Twitter.

Superbowl ads are sexist. This is well trod ground: Marketers objectify women and play up stereotypes in order to sell things to (heterosexual) men. But we knew this year was going to be special. This year there was going to be some extra anti-feminist flavor. This year, there was going to be Tim Tebow.

We’ll come back to Tim and his anti-choice ad in a second. But for now, let’s take a look at the companies that decided that it would be a great idea to isolate half the population from their consumer base.
There were fewer half-naked women and dick jokes this year. Instead, the 2010 Superbowl Ad Mantra seemed to have one common theme: “Feeling castrated? . . . by women? Man up.”

Dodge Charger: Man’s Last Stand

A male voice-over starts with a first person monologue of the mundane life of the American male (“I will walk the dog, I will have fruit for breakfast”), as the ad cuts to shots of men staring blankly, blinking at the camera.

“Yeah, life is boring,” you think, “a car could fix that.” But then there’s an eerie crescendo, and it becomes clear that this voice isn’t just listing his gripes with the world, he’s listing his gripes with a person — and not just any person, a woman: “I will say yes, when you want me to say yes . . .I will take your call, I will listen to your opinion of my friends. . . I will be civil to your mother.” Simultaneously the voice-over seems to be getting angrier as the shots get tighter, finally focusing on the twitching eyes of a man in a suit. “Because I do these things, I will drive the car I want to drive.”

The ad is actually frightening. Not only because the voice-over gets more incensed as the tasks get more mundane (putting your underwear in a hamper? you mean being an adult? you think you deserve a car for that?), but because it’s maybe the most explicit misogyny I’ve ever seen in a Superbowl ad. “Feeling emasculated by your wife?” the ad seems to be saying. “Reaching your boiling point? We know you probably want to hit her, but buy a car instead.”

Oh, and did I mention that a television serial-killer (Michael Hall who plays Dexter) does the voice-over? That’s not creepy or violence promoting at all.

Shocker: “The Biggest Loser” promotes unhealthy weight loss practices

Apparently contestants on The Biggest Loser exercise for six hours a day, dehydrate themselves until they urinate blood, and push their bodies to extreme limits, sometimes causing them to pass out or be otherwise injured. Two contestants were taken to the emergency room on the first episode of the current season. Gawker summarizes the Times article thusly:

The winner of season one “dropped some of the weight by fasting and dehydrating himself to the point that he was urinating blood.” Actually many of the people dropped mostly water weight, and gained much of it back after the show ended and they began hydrating properly.
Whose fault is it that these dangerously fat people are dangerously dehydrating themselves in pursuit of a cash prize? The fault of the fat people themselves, according to the professional fitness trainer Jillian “Evil” Michaels. “Contestants can get a little too crazy and they can get too thin,” she said.
Don’t go blaming the show for that; they never said they were qualified to know about health and weight loss and whatever! The show’s waivers state that no guarantees have been made that the medical professionals are qualified to “diagnose medical conditions that may affect my fitness to participate in the series.”
Also the show tried to intimidate former contestants into not speaking to the New York Times.

The contestants also end up gaining weight back after the show, through such unhealthy practices as drinking water.

Inspiring people to eat healthier and exercise more is a great goal. Exercise is great! Healthy, nutritious food is great! But that’s not what The Biggest Loser does. The Biggest Loser puts fat people on display as moral failures — it suggests that people are fat simply because they are lazy, and if only they worked a little harder, they could lose the weight. In reality, the contestants are nearly killing themselves for the amusement of the viewing audience. I’ve never actually watched The Biggest Loser because the whole concept disturbs me, but I’m further unnerved to know that the show puts its contestants through extreme weight-loss without proper medical oversight. To make matters worse, they do it under the guise of “health” — as if extreme exercise, disordered eating and intentional dehydration are “healthy” so long as they make you thin.

I suppose, though, that a real show about health — where in the end there would still be some healthy fat people and some healthy thin people and some healthy in-between people — would make really boring TV. But NBC could at least drop the pretense of The Biggest Loser being a “health” show and just admit it’s about making fat people do all sorts of extreme and dangerous things for our entertainment. You know, hold up the mirror.

Alternative Business School Rankings

This is awesome: The Aspen Institute has released a survey of MBA programs, going beyond test scores and ranking them according to “how well schools are preparing their students for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business.” [Full disclosure: A friend of mine worked on the report].

The rankings reward programs which are not only academically rigorous, but which impart upon their students values, ethics and a sense of social responsibility. Some of the findings:

• The percentage of schools surveyed that require students to take a course dedicated to business and society issues has increased dramatically over time, but at a slowing rate: 34% in 2001; 45% in 2003; 54% in 2005; 63% in 2007; 69% in 2009.
• Since 2007, the number of elective courses offered per school that contain some degree of social, environmental or ethical content has increased by 12%, from approximately 16.6 to 18.6 electives.
• The proportion of schools offering general social, environmental or ethical content in required core courses has increased in many business disciplines–Accounting, Economics, Finance, Management, Marketing, Operations Management–since the last survey in 2007.
• However, the percentage of schools requiring content in a core course on how mainstream business can act as an engine for social or environmental change remains low, at 30%.
• Approximately 7% of faculty at the surveyed business schools published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed, business journals that address social, environmental or ethical issues. The titles and abstracts of the 1,211 articles are available at www.BeyondGreyPinstripes.org.

It’s a pretty cool report, and definitely worth checking out.

No More Rape By Contract

Senator Al Franken passed a major piece of legislation today, a major warning for the defense contractors hired by the U.S. government and their disregard for their female employees. It’s notable that all women in the Senate, Democrat and Republican, voted in favor of the amendment while thirty Republican men voted against it.

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang raped by her co-workers while working for defense contractor KBR/Halliburton in Baghdad, and was then detained in a shipping container for over 24 hours without food or water and told that if she sought medical treatment “she’d be out of a job.” Afterward, Jones was prevented from taking the case to court because her contract stipulated that any sexual assault allegations could only be heard in private arbitration.

The Franken amendment withholds contracts from these companies “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

The Department of Defense opposed the bill. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama was rather vocal about his opposition, maintaining that “Franken’s amendment overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.”

Apparently because companies, not women, deserve due process under the law. And because corporations should be allowed to abuse and aid in the abuse of their employees regardless of all civil and criminal laws designed to protect them!

More power to designing protections for an individual’s rights as a citizen and worker, especially when the taxpayers are footing the bill.

Facebook for the Rich; MySpace for the Poor?

Earlier research showed that the social networking choice between Facebook, MySpace and Xanga was based on the users’ race, ethnicity, and education, with Latino students trending toward MySpace, white students trending toward Facebook, and Asian and Asian-American students trending towards Xanga. Interestingly, there were no discernable social networking trends for black students.

In the meantime, Danah Boyd discovered that white teenagers believe some social networking sites like MySpace are “ghetto” (their words), while others are “more cultured” (again, their words), which dictated why one SNS gets used more often than the next. Boyd explains,

It wasn’t just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality… What happened was modern day “white flight.” Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by “choice” but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

Now a new consumer behavior analysis firm has completed additional research confirming that digital migration is taking place on SNS primarily along class lines.

Call me naive, but I always assumed the rise of Facebook usage, at least among my friends, had more to do with usability than any other function. MySpace was created as a band promotion site, not for individuals, whereas Facebook was created for individuals to connect. And to date, MySpace seems more design and tech clunky than Facebook does — that is, if I ignore all your invitations asking me to join your farm/restaurant/mafia ring. Nevertheless, the evidence appears to be stacking up in a way that reveals a new kind of digital divide, one in which social groups are choosing not to connect with or communicate with one another.

Thoughts?