Many years ago I worked with a reporter named Jane who was about 25 years my senior. She had worked for a major newspaper in New England and told me she was fired when she got pregnant. Even though she was one of the top reporters at the paper they canned her. She was a single mother so losing her job hit very hard.

I was shocked and told her so. She said, “Eve, that’s how things were back then.” No one questioned such things, she explained, there were no laws and women were looked at as second class citizens.

There I was thinking, wasn’t it great how far women, our society, have come.

Well, it turns out we haven’t come that far. My column this week is about pregnancy discrimination. And guess what folks, it’s on the rise.

It was disheartening to look at the rising number of pregnancy discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and it’s been a bummer to get so many emails from readers telling me about their stories of bias before and after they got pregnant.

Is it just me, or are we moving in the wrong direction?

Update (5/25/07)

Several days after my column ran on MSNBC.com, the EEOC announced a list of guidelines making it clear what the agency considers discrimination against pregnant employees, and also workers who are care givers to family members. This guidelines will hopefully help women, and men, out there understand once and for all what their rights are.

An EEOC statement says: A wide range of circumstances are highlighted in the guidance,
including: sex-based stereotyping and subjective decision making
regarding working mothers; assumptions about pregnant workers;
discrimination against working fathers and women of color; stereotyping
based on association with an individual with a disability; and hostile
work environments affecting caregivers. The guidance is intended to
assist employers, employees, and EEOC staff alike.

Check out the new guidelines and a fact sheet.

OK — workplace warning for you all.

More and more companies are using so-called personality and psychological tests to figure out if they want to hire you or promote you.

Some people feel uncomfortable taking such tests because they feel their privacy is being violated. In some cases, it may be. These tests are designed to delve into how you think and how you feel. Employers are trying to figure out if you’ll be a worker bee, or if you’ll be honest.You can refuse to take these tests, but there’s a good chance you won’t get the gig or the promotion. And there are no laws as of yet that protect workers who just want to say no to this sort of mind intrusion.

Well, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is now evaluating these tests and working on putting together some guidelines for employers on what they can and can’t do. The EEOC held a meeting this week with interested parties and alas the meeting got very little media attention.

Here’s a link to the press release on the event: http://www.eeoc.gov/press/5-16-07.html
You can also see the panelists’ detailed testimony on their website - http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/meetings/5-16-07/index.html.Also check out the recent story I did on personality tests for MSNBC.com - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14856325/.

I asked EEOC spokesman David Grinberg about what will happen next and he said, “The purpose of this meeting was to get recommendations from the experts
about how EEOC should apply its resources in this area. The experts gave us thought-provoking suggestions. Our job now is to assess the
recommendations and decide how to proceed.”

Let’s hope workers will be the ones who benefit. But in the meantime, there are warning signs to keep in mind when you take such tests. If they ask you extremely personal questions about your religious beliefs, or about your plans to start a family, that’s a big no no. Refuse to answer such questions and if you don’t get a job or promotion as a result contact the EEOC. You might have a case of discrimination on your hands.

Don’t just do things blindly that employers ask you to do. There is nothing wrong with asking questions and doing research on tests your asked to take before you take them. You are all free thinkers with free wills!! Right?!

So it turns out many airline jobs pay under $9 an hour. That’s barely more than fast food establishments.

I remember lots of my friends in college worked hard to get gigs at the airlines, either working at the ticket counters or handling luggage. It was considered a primo job back then because the pay was good and you got lots of air travel perks. Things have indeed changed, and an article in today’s Wall Street Journal talks about how hard it has become for airline carriers to find enough people to fill jobs. Cutbacks in the industry has led to a stagnation in wages and that has been the biggest problem attracting people to do the work…not easy work I might add, especially having to lug huge baggage.

It really makes me wonder what we’re facing as a society. I know I’ve harped on this before, but wages are going no where for the average American worker. We are not moving forward economically, at least the majority of the population. I know, there are lots of new millionaires and people with money oozing out of their ears, but for the Average Joe there is no oozing. In fact, it’s the de-oozing of the American rank and file.

There aren’t many jobs left that women haven’t gotten into. What about gondoliers in Venice?

After a thousand years, a woman has finally gotten her own paddle. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the story on the front page of the New York Times today. It’s about a woman named Alexandra Hai who is the first woman to become a gondolier in the beautiful water-logged city.

It took a court to get her paddling but that can’t take away from her accomplishment, right? Well, one thing can.

There are accusations that she got her job only because she was a woman. That she couldn’t pass the many tests needed to become a gondolier. That is the claim by many in Venice. If indeed she got some breaks because of her gender, then that sucks. That shouldn’t be the way women move forward. But if, as she claims, the tests were unduly difficult for her because critics would go to any length to keep her out of the water, then that sucks too.

If she’s qualified then more power to her. But if she just got the gig because she is sans penis, then I feel for the poor sap tourists who will be putting their lives in her unqualified hands as she tries to navigate the winding canals.

There have been quite a few surveys that show workers would rather be happy at work, get the flexibility they want, etc., than get a fatter paycheck.

In this greed-centric society can this really be true? Possibly. Or maybe people are just willing to settle because trying to get more money can be so difficult.

One survey by Salary.com found that sixty-two percent of small-business employees think they can get more money at a large company but they stay anyway. Some of the reasons they give for hanging on are better relationships with bosses and co-workers, and the all important work-life balance.
I suppose we’re all looking for a better life, a more balanced life, but with gas, and other consumer goods, climbing into the stratosphere good intentions may land you in the poor house.

Are women a cheap pair of stilettos you buy at TJ Maxx?

Or do we deserve equal pay for breaking our backs?

Women also contribute to the bottom line.

The pay gap between men and women is really a crime.

So this Monday I address the issue in my column, go here.

Maybe it will help women learn how to cheer

for themselves when they enter the negotiating lair.

Women armed with cojones! Work world beware.

Ok, update. I got quite a few emails responding to my MSNBC.com column on women and the art of negotiation. Most of the comments were supportive, some weren’t. But even those responses made some good points…except this one:

Why do even waste your time writing such nonsense, real studies show women make more than men with comparable jobs not less plus all sorts of costly entitlements the rest of us pay for because of their gender. Women in the work force are a joke, their insatiable emotional needs and special treatment they demand make them a burden not a positive. Women like you know longer have credibility you don’t know how to support an arguement with facts and men have caught on to you behaving like a child to get your way, if women were really a value businesses would perform better than they use to not much worse like they do. Get over it man hater/society destroyer.

Running a company that is responsible for a deadly refinery blast and a major oil spill is not enough to get the CEO to resign in disgrace.

Being gay however, that’s enough.

The AP is reporting today that the chief executive of BP, the British oil giant, is resigning because a newspaper is planning on publishing the details of his private life, which include the fact that he had a long term relationship with a man.

The chief executive John Browne said in a statement: “For the past 41 years of my career at BP I have kept my private life separate from my business life. I have always regarded my sexuality as a personal matter, to be kept private. It is a matter of personal disappointment that a newspaper group has now decided that allegations about my personal life should be made public.”

Now to be fair, the guy had announced he was going to leave BP this summer, but this recent news, he maintains, was just too much for him to take so he’s leaving immediately. (Update: Turns out there was probably pressure from the BP board for him to split because he lied about the affair in court.)
Is it just me, who the heck cares about his personal life? During his tenure 15 people died at the BP refinery in Texas City in 2005 because of negligence and the environment was given yet another blow because of the BP oil spill in Alaska last year. But it’s not these events that expedite his departure.

Go figure.