{"id":7412,"date":"2014-06-30T20:11:07","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T01:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=7412"},"modified":"2014-06-30T20:11:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T01:11:07","slug":"no-nice-work-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/06\/30\/no-nice-work-today\/","title":{"rendered":"No nice work today."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 181px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"decoded\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/87\/Face-angry_red.png\" alt=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/87\/Face-angry_red.png\" width=\"181\" height=\"196\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">angry face. source: Wikimedia Commons, Henrike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This was a terrible, horrible, lousy day, brought to you by our 5-4 Supreme Court decisions in the Hobby Lobby case and Harris v Quinn. My response: Keep your hands off my body&#8230;and my union!<\/p>\n<p>The cases in short:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hobby Lobby: Agreed a private firm could claim a religious belief on the part of the firm as a basis for denying several kinds of contraception in the company&#8217;s health insurance coverage.<\/li>\n<li>Harris: Determined that some public sector workers could opt out completely of union fees as well as dues, even as they benefit from the union contract.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Off my body: Amanda Marcotte writes about the Hobby Lobby decision at <a href=\"http:\/\/rhrealitycheck.org\/article\/2014\/06\/30\/hobby-lobby-part-greater-war-contraception\/?utm_content=buffer7e43d&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer\">RH Reality Check:<\/a> &#8220;Hobby Lobby is Part of a Greater War on Contraception.&#8221; Though there are all those qualifiers to the decision even in my short description above, Marcotte says, &#8220;Make no mistake: they are coming for your birth control.&#8221; At Salon Elias Isquith offers highlights from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/06\/30\/here_are_the_highlights_of_justice_ginsburgs_fiery_hobby_lobby_dissent\/\">Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg&#8217;s &#8220;fiery dissent&#8221;<\/a> including, &#8220;The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would\u2026deny legions of women who do not hold their employers\u2019 beliefs access to contraceptive coverage.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The focus on birth control&#8211;nothing else&#8211;is just creepy, and it still shocks me when I read people saying &#8220;why should we pay for your sex?&#8221; Comments on FB and twitter have been flying. Sociologist Jennifer Reich&#8211;who just published <a href=\"http:\/\/routledge-ny.com\/books\/search\/author\/jennifer_reich\/\"><em>Reproduction and Society<\/em>:\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/routledge-ny.com\/books\/search\/author\/jennifer_reich\/\">An Interdisciplinary Reader-<\/a>&#8211;<\/em>said<\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"userContent\">Never in my life did I think the Supreme Court would rule in such a blatantly politicized way. Religion <\/span><\/em><span class=\"userContent\">only<\/span><em><span class=\"userContent\"> applies to birth control, not other health issues other people might need and that others might resent. Having said that and now reading the decision&#8211;and spending all my waking hours thinking about vaccination mandates and personal beliefs&#8211;it is also clear the government was mistaken in ever allowing any organizations to exercise a religion-based opt-out. If health is a right, who you work for should never have been the criteria for getting what you need. Such a disheartening morning.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Off my union: Jennifer&#8217;s outrage over whose rights are asserted (businesses) and are not asserted (workers) brings me to the Harris decision. The Harris v Quinn case\u00a0 (as Nick Bunker <a href=\"http:\/\/equitablegrowth.org\/news\/decline-unions-america-abetted-bit-supreme-court\/\">explains here<\/a>) &#8220;centered on the ability of unions to require workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to pay fees to the union.&#8221; The decision, which abrogates those fees, may lead to even more decline than we have already seen in unionization.<\/p>\n<p>Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld have<a href=\"http:\/\/asr.sagepub.com\/content\/76\/4\/513.abstract\"> shown<\/a> how the historic decline in unions contributes to the rise in inequality since the 1970s. Public sector unions&#8211;I&#8217;m a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mscaunion.org\/\">proud membe<\/a>r of one&#8211;have not declined as much as private sector unions, and this is relevant because the Harris case pertains to public sector unions. Meanwhile, a greater proportion of\u00a0 women are in public sector unions than private sector unions. CEPR&#8217;s Nicole Woo<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/06\/19\/unions-a-way-for-feminism-to-overcome-its-class-problem\/\"> wrote here last week<\/a> that strong\u00a0 unions are good for women&#8230;and good for families, too. Her column covers<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cepr.net\/documents\/women-union-2014-06.pdf\"> her recent <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cepr.net\/documents\/women-union-2014-06.pdf\">paper<\/a> from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which highlights just how valuable and important unions are to women. Weak unions are bad for many (and<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/06\/01\/nice-work-unions-matter-to-women\/\"> in many ways<\/a>), but for today I&#8217;m thinking about how a decision weakening unions, especially public sector unions, is a blow to women workers.<\/p>\n<p>A really bad day. Not nice at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was a terrible, horrible, lousy day, brought to you by our 5-4 Supreme Court decisions in the Hobby Lobby case and Harris v Quinn. My response: Keep your hands off my body&#8230;and my union! The cases in short: Hobby Lobby: Agreed a private firm could claim a religious belief on the part of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108,1],"tags":[13,27708,1430,11338],"class_list":["post-7412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work","category-uncategorized","tag-inequality","tag-reproductive-health","tag-supreme-court","tag-unions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7412"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7422,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions\/7422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}