Report: Sexual discrimination rampant

[Omaha Steve]

http://peoplesworld.org/report-sexual-discrimination-rampant/

by: Mark Gruenberg
August 1 2011

WASHINGTON - Sexual discrimination on the job, including sexual harassment, is much more rampant, and takes many more forms, than is generally realized, a new report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research says.

"A substantial portion of employers each year are subject to a charge," under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act editorial, the nation's basic and wide-ranging civil rights law, the 160-page report explains.

"One recent study, covering 1990 to 2002, found that 13 percent of establishments had at least one charge of sex discrimination and 20 percent had at least one charge of racial discrimination. Another found that during a 30-year period, more than a third of employers faced a charge of discrimination."

The catch is that only one-fourth of those charges ever wind up in court, and even fewer result in court orders against the offending companies and money for the injured workers, the report notes. That's because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the main enforcer of the law, first tries to solve the conflicts out of court, through mediation, and most are settled that way.

Nevertheless, the EEOC wound up with 735,293 charges of employment discrimination from 2000-2008: 36 percent on racial discrimination, 30 percent on sex discrimination, 23 percent age discrimination, 20 percent disability discrimination, 11 percent national origin discrimination and three percent religious discrimination. Some cases involved more than one type of bias.

The findings left two panels on the issue discussing the problem and what to do about it - and unions are a key anti-discrimination weapon, said Coalition of Labor Union Women Executive Director Carol Rosenblatt. CLUW co-sponsored the report.

FULL story at link.