Sexual harassment and assault has been in the headlines, thanks/no thanks to serial offender Harvey Weinstein, and many reasons have been offered for why women wouldn’t or couldn’t come forward. Bryce Covert offers an additional one: actresses have no federal protections against workplace sexual harassment, and they’re not alone.
Any who were working on a Weinstein film were almost certainly classified as independent contractors, not regular employees. And that means that the anti-discrimination and sexual-harassment protections of federal law didn’t apply to them. [...]
Workplace discrimination and harassment based on sex are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which outlaws “employment practice[s] [that] discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” If an employee feels she is being harassed at work, she can file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first step in taking legal action. But the catch is that she has to be an employee for Title VII protections to apply. Independent contractors, temp workers, and those employed by contracting companies are not covered under the law. “Title VII has to be related to employment,” explained Catherine Ruckelshaus, program director at the National Employment Law Project. Anyone who’s not a traditional employee can’t easily bring claims under it. “The more attenuated you get from an employment relationship, the harder it is under Title VII.”
That means that not just actors and other movie industry workers but truck drivers and Uber drivers and home healthcare workers and an increasing number and type of workers lack protections.
● The Supreme Court has a chance to restore a critical right to women at work. You can probably see the problems inherent in that sentence.
● California Gov. Jerry Brown has this habit of balancing good acts with bad ones— recently, extending unpaid family leave to small business workers but then vetoing paid pregnancy leave for teachers and other school employees.
● Why Disney workers rallied for a living wage:
Like many hospitality workers who toil away for low wages in Central Florida's tourism economy, Geary can't afford much on her salary. She and her husband rent with her parents to make it work, though some of her co-workers have it worse – they live in cheap motels behind Walt Disney World on U.S. Highway 192 or borrow money from family for basic needs.
● At Napa vineyards untouched by fires, the grapes still must be picked. Which means workers breathing a lot of smoke.
● Chipotle downgraded by Bank of America on new concern: It's paying employees too much. Well, isn’t that terrible.
● University of Chicago grad students, after being told their labor isn't work, vote on union. And the vote is yes!
● No casting couch for low-wage women, but lots of sexual harassment.
● Workers Independent News: