All Workers Are Serfs Without Rights, Until We Get A Congress That Will Fix It

It was easy to overlook last week, but the Supreme Court ruled decisively that workers have no rights at all in the workplace and should be fucking glad they get the crumbs they do.

Bryce Covert at Think Progress:

On (June 25), the Supreme Court handed down decisions in two little-watched cases: Vance v. Ball State University and University of Texas Southwestern Center v. Nassar. Both cases erected new hurdles for those who experience workplace harassment or discrimination.
In the Vance case, the Court decided that when it comes to sexual harassment, someone is only considered a “supervisor” if he has the power to hire, fire, or promote the employee. Because harassment from an equal coworker is treated differently than from a supervisor, the decision provides more cover to those who oversee someone’s work but can’t hire or fire them.

Nassar makes it much more difficult for a victim of discrimination to prove that he was retaliated against for voicing a complaint about it. Under the “mixed motive” framework that previously stood, an employer couldn’t automatically escape liability if the racism, sexism, or other discrimination was just one of several factors driving a decision to retaliate. But the Nassar decision undoes that framework, leaving the victim of discrimination to prove that it was the only motivating factor.

In her dissent on both decisions, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called on Congress to fix these loopholes with new legislation, as it has done with previous decisions. But what would that legislation have to look like?

The fix for Vance is “in theory a pretty straightforward fix,” Jennifer Reisch, legal director at Equal Rights Advocates, told ThinkProgress. Congress could pass a law overruling the Supreme Court’s decision and “clarify who counts as a ‘supervisor’ for the purpose of holding employers responsible for unlawful harassment,” she said. It would have to go back and broaden the definition to include not just those who can hire and fire, but those who are also in charge of an employee’s daily work activities, thus able to reassign an employee who they are harassing.

SNIP
 
This sort of corrective action usually “happens eventually, but it doesn’t always happen quickly,” Caiola said. But what can push Congress into action is public outrage. “It was that sort of outcry from the public that turned the Ledbetter decision into the Ledbetter Act,” Graves said.

This isn't just about harassment and discrimination; the way the Court conservatives found to twist every complaint into a win for owners and other parasitical rich means that it's only a matter of time before the Court strikes down the minimum wage, the 40-hour week, the 8-hour day, vacations, sick days and bathroom breaks. 

Those are already non-existent in industries like meat processing where workers don't have access to unions or lawyers. That 19th-century horror will be coming to your cubicle soon.

So, how outraged are you?  Enough to run real Democratic candidates for Congress next year and work non-stop getting every Democratic voter in your district out and to the polls?