A year and a half ago Feministing reported about rapes occuring to women working for defense contractors in Iraq. The gist of the story is this: assaulted workers told, badgered, intimidated into keeping silent about vicious assaults on them.
One of the people who this happened to was Jamie Leigh Jones. She testified before Congress in December 2007 about being drugged and gang-raped in company barracks in Iraq. Her company, Halliburton, said that when she signed her employment contract, she lost her rights to a jury trial. The contract they offered forced her into having her claims decided through secret, binding arbitration. WTF?! She had no idea.
Fast forward to October 2009. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an anti-rape amendment to a larger defense appropriations bill last week that (per talkingpointsmemo) would “prohibit the Pentagon from hiring contractors whose employment contracts prevent employees from taking work-related allegations of rape and discrimination to court.” Kind of minimum standard.
The amendment passed, 68-30, in the Senate. Because that is the right thing to do. Indeed, Jon Stewart profiled the case, pointing out that, “If, to protect Halliburton, you have to side against rape victims, you might want to rethink your allegiances.”
But, Huffington Post reports that someone not yet clearly rethinking his allegiances is Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI). He’s considering removing the amendment, and he has the power to do so. Explains HuffPo: “Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up.”
There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to start. But I wanted to provide the update. Read this for info about contacting Sen. Inouye to tell him to support the Franken amendment.
Comments
gwp_admin — October 27, 2009
I appreciate your summary and for the update about Inouye. My jaw dropped when I watched the Daily Show episode you mention -- truly, WTF is going on?!?
Rebecca Bach — October 28, 2009
Thanks for bringing up this issue.I agree that it is outrageous for anyone to consider overturning Franken's amendment. The amendment only refers to companies that the pentagon does business with, not to all companies (which it should). No company should be allowed to create employment contracts that state "if you happen to be savagely attacked by you co-workers we will handle this internally through arbitration". No need to involve the legal system in this horrorific crime." If this were any other crime we wouldn't even be having this conversation.