Labor Deptartment zeroes in on women's issues

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.peoplesworld.org/labor-deptartment-zeroes-in-on-women-s-issues/

by: Mark Gruenberg
December 6 2010

WASHINGTON (PAI) - The Labor Department's Women's Bureau, faced with small size, a budget freeze and potential cuts, will emphasize research on working women's issues, outreach to workers and - despite a potentially hostile GOP House majority - paycheck fairness, the agency's director says.

Speaking Nov. 23 to the Clearinghouse on Women's Issues, Director Sara Manzano-Diaz added, ruefully, that she frequently finds the agency tackling the same issues it did when it was created 90 years ago.



One of those is equal pay for equal work, she notes. "I'm a little disappointed we didn't get the Paycheck Fairness Act passed" in the Senate, where lawmakers failed, by two votes, to halt a planned Republican filibuster against the legislation. "But we'll keep trying," Manzano-Diaz added.

The Women's Bureau was established in 1920, just after women won the right to vote in all elections. Over the years, it has tackled issues such as equal pay, work-life balance, the Equal Rights Amendment, child care on the job - and tax credits for child care - and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But with 58 workers, down from 100 in its heyday years ago, and a program budget that, after salaries, totals $1.2 million, the Women's Bureau must turn to the private sector to help it advance the rights and economic prospects of female workers.

It's also making the case to companies that the issues it tackles and the causes it champions are good business sense, too, Manzano-Diaz told the Nov. 23 meeting.

"We're making the case in business-to-business discussions, especially with small businesses," at regional conferences that both the bureau and its parent agency, the Labor Department, have hosted around the country.

FULL story at link.

[niyad]

1. "tackling the same issues for 90 years?? what a pathetic commentary on women's issues in this

country.