Economic Justice - California National Organization for Women

Economic Justice

A fundamental goal of CA NOW is to ensure economic justice for women of all socio-economic backgrounds.

At the core of this past year’s Occupy movement was the question of fairness in our society. Our national economy was brought to its knees by the greed of Wall Street investment firms and corporate bankers. And although their actions threw us into this recession, not a single person has ever gone to jail or been punished for those actions. Instead, those of us who have played by the rules have lost our jobs, our homes and our savings. That isn’t fair!

California NOW also believes that public and private employers should pay the legal wage to all women, by that we mean equal pay for equal work.

California NOW believes that:

Public and private employers should ensure fair and comparable wages, hours, and benefits, including defined benefit retirement benefits, for all employees for comparable work;

Public and private employees should be free to collectively bargain for fair and comparable wages, hours, working conditions and benefits including defined benefit retirement benefit;

Public and private employers should undertake concrete, verifiable actions to recruit and retain women and candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups;

Public and private employers should eliminate all forms of discrimination based on attributes such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or cultural stereotypes in all work-related privileges or activities, including wages, hours, benefits, job access and qualifications, and working conditions;

Public and private employers should prohibit discrimination based on marital, parental or reproductive status in making decisions regarding employment or promotion, including ensuring employment security that allows for interruptions in work for maternity, parental leave and family-related responsibilities;

Public and private employers should implement equitable policies for non- salaried employees regarding contract work, temporary work and layoffs that do not disproportionately affect women, or other marginalized group;

Public and private employers should strive to pay a living wage to all workers;

All companies should be required to provide sick leave and family leave benefits for their employees;

Domestic workers are entitled to the same basic protections afforded other workers;

Agriculture should no longer be except from child labor law protections

An economic issue that California NOW strongly supports is a public bank.

While other states are teetering on bankruptcy, the state of North Dakota continues to report surpluses, with its state-owned public bank having posted 2011 profits of $62 million, setting a profit record for its seventh straight year – and every penny of that profit belongs to the 670,000 people of the state, produced without taxation. North Dakota has a population that is less than 1/10th the size of Los Angeles; the Bank of North Dakota produced $62 million in revenue last year and $2.2 billion in loans. Larger states like California could generate significantly more. It’s something that our organization will continue to discuss and support as a new bill on this important issue is introduced in 2012.