#work inequality

[panopticonblog]

Video: Labor’s $15 Wage Strategy

Ebony Hughes works two jobs and still struggles to make ends meet. She is an example of the kind of worker that organizers are trying to galvanize under the banner of civil rights to raise wages.

[brian-g2420]

The result of losing political power is that the economic rewards of production continue being inequitably distributed across the labor market.  Those on the receiving end of these developments are women, migrant workers, and workers taking casual jobs. The logic market is increasingly replacing unions in rationalizing the minimum wage and the living wage.  Logic wage is also increasingly defining the nonunion labor further increasing wage inequality in the modern economy.

[inequalityforqwomen-blog]

Reflection

Researching this topic has made me feel a bit sad. I thought that we had made more progress in the area of gender and race equality than what we have today. After reading all the articles I have some to realize that no matter what level of education or what type of work environment you’re in, there will be some type of discrimination or harassment present. Even going beyond the scope of job discrimination for queer women of color, men of color and other marginalized groups experience this type of discrimination as well. It is not as severe as it is for queer women of color but nevertheless it is a problem that we as a society in 2015 should not have to be dealing with. My own experience researching this topic has made me realize that educating oneself is the first step in creating change. Without being informed on the issues that these women face will only case more marginalization.

-SM

[inequalityforqwomen-blog]

Discussion Of An Institutional Example

Institutions that are affected by this problem are medical institutions and all employers. As I mentioned before in my first analysis of a scholarly source, there is a lot of discrimination in the health field against LGBT physicians. They get harassed by their coworkers and even get less referrals because of their sexual orientation. They receive tremendous backlash when their sexual orientation does not even inhibit their professional abilities. This kind of discrimination against gay women of color can be seen in any employer. If a person’s sexual identity is easily identifiable, for example, butch women or trans women or men, they will most likely not be hired. This is of interest to these institutions because if they do not change their ways, they will either be forced to by legislation, get sued, or receive backlash from social media.  

-SM

[inequalityforqwomen-blog]

Photo Credit

Introduction

Work inequality for queer women of color is an issue that is sometimes overlooked because much of the attention is on white cisgender women. It’s a known fact by now that women in the workforce are not treated the same as men. Women are paid less than men even when doing the same work, are less likely to get a raise, discriminated against because they can bear children, and are more likely to get sexually harassed than men. In contrast, queer women of color can experience more discrimination/oppression than other women in the work place. Queer women of color can experience a higher rate of sexual harassment, a higher wage gap, and also a higher rate of mistreatment. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed because it is the livelihood of these women that is on the line. Queer women of color need to provide for themselves and their families but it is extremely difficult to do that when they are in a hostile work environment. This topic is of interest to me because I firmly believe that all women should have the right to feel safe and also to have the same opportunities that men do.

ٙSM

[ravenyarnworks]

We don’t need equality...

I work customer service. I love what I do and we have super chill customers, by and large. 

But the difference between male CSRs and female CSRs experiences’ basically goes as such:

Male Coworker: I got hit on. By a guy. What the hell?

Female coworker: Three guys, one girl, and an invitation to break the law in return for a vibrator. And that’s just in the past two days.

Me: Someone proposed to me again, and two other people want me to visit them.

If a (male) customer feels that I haven’t given him what he wants, it is not unheard of for him to inform me, “Little girl, your supervisor will tell me different.” Actually, no, he won’t, and when I speak to the supervisor, they’re going to tell me that I should have deescalated your idiocy. If they’re male. If they’re female, they’ll just sigh and check to see what I did to try and deescalate your fury. 

Having checked with male coworkers, if they have to hand off to a supervisor or manager, it’s going to be because they couldn’t figure out a solution and the customer got annoyed. 

Two nights ago, while I was waiting for a supervisor to check something, I was chatting with my customer. I’m a geek who deals with geeks for a living--I can speak their language, which often means that the proposals I get actively involve, “--Can I [add you on Facebook, propose marriage, otherwise assume a connection, etc] because I need more women who like this stuff in my life?”

It’s supposed to be a compliment. It’s not. It’s fucking creepy. The good news is is that the company I work for keeps most of our actual personal info locked down tight--so my customers know my first name, but very few other things that are true. We’re allowed to get off the phone if someone becomes abusive towards us. We’re allowed to say “Okay, that’s terrifying, I am getting the hell off this phone.” (Though not in those words.)

And yet even with those protections, I just sort of keep a weekly running tally of weirdos so that when we have downtime, I can be wryly amused by other peoples’ weirdos and they mine.

Because if you can’t laugh about this, you’re going to scream. Because, right, we’re all treated equal and we don’t need feminism.

[stellarcentaur]

Some days we have a manager at the restaurant where I work. They used to have one of the other servers manage on the actual manager’s days off bc well duh there should always be a manager on duty.

They don’t let her fill in as manager anymore. Work is slower and there are not enough hours and those of us with seniority are being skimped on our hours so I suggested having this server manage again on days that the actual manager is off. That way, it would free up some shifts so all the servers have are receiving a fair amount of hours.

The bosses say no because they don’t want to pay her the $10/hour to manage. They don’t want to spend that money.

Meanwhile, they give the 18 year old cook a RAISE and significantly MORE hours, telling him how much they appreciate his hard work while the other senior server and I barely work 20 hours a week and haven’t gotten a raise in months.

Now, the cook is my little brother. I’m the reason they hired him, because they wanted someone who would work as hard as me. They also almost hired my sister at one point as a server, but they changed their minds because she wasn’t 21 yet, and we serve alcohol.

I work much harder than what I get paid to do, bc I was raised to always try my best and to work hard for what I earn. But my bosses have a prejudice against the servers. They call us ‘the girls’ and when one person doesn’t do her job, it’s everyone’s fault and we all get yelled at.

After almost three years of overachieving I still make only $4 an hour. My brother the cook started at $8 something an hour and now makes $12.

So the bosses couldn’t “afford” to pay the senior server $10 an hour for a day and a half a week but they could raise the cook’s pay rate to $12 an hour and give him 20 more hours a week