Re: [Fwd: Re: "Family values"]

[Adam Ophir Shapira <vorlon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> There is an attempt to pass federal legislation in the United States
> because of the clear evidence that women who have no children are being
> preferred over women with children. With women coming into the workforce
> over the past several decades, employers have selected those women who
> they believe will consistently produce a greater amount of surplus-value
> (women are superexploited, since their gender subordination allows
> capitalists to provide less than the social necessary labor portion of
> total value produced by women to women with the same qualifications and
> skills as men). Parenthood has never much of a concern with fathers, since
> mothers were there to care for the children -- but precisely because this
> cultural arrangement is still in force, employers view mothers
> differently, and thus discriminate against mothers. It would contrary to
> the logic of capitalism to seek out mothers for workers given mothers
> enter the workplace with (hopefully) a split loyalty. One hardly needs
> proof of this, but if one wants proof, the U.S. Congress is presently
> relying on several studies as well as a spate of discrimination suits
> currently working their way through the courts. Because I regard the
> matter as self-evident, I will rely on interested but skeptical parties to
> find the evidence for themselves.
>
> Andy
> http://web.utk.edu/~aaustin

This legislation would deal with the symptom of the problem
rather than the root of the problem. True, dealing with just
the symptom is better than doing nothing at all ... and for
that reason this legislation would best be passed (assuming,
of course, that there aren't any hidden clauses in the bill
that would make things worse on the whole). However, since it
only deals with a symptom, it is only a temporary solution.

The underlying problem is employers who think it is their
right to demand stuff from workers when they're not on the
clock ... or to overwork their workers.

If employers recognize worker's rights to finish working
at the end of the day, and then go home and not have to
hear from their boss, or think about their boss, until
the next morning when the workday starts ... and if all
employees are given reasonable flexibility in schedule ...
then split-loyalty will not be as much of an issue as
it currently is.

Of course, the only way that I see employers recognizing
this right among it's workers is if the company is a
reasonably small one, owned by the employees ... or if
it is a large employee-owned company in which the local
group has a reasonabe degree of autonomy. The ideal form
of legislation would be one that would favor such
companies over others with more exploitive structures
by (a) favoring such comapnies when government contracts
are awarded, (b) giving such companies tax-breaks, or
(c) anything else that I may not have thoguht of. Sadly,
I don't think we'll see such legislation on the floor
any time soon.