Take Action!

The rumors are true: Sonny Perdue is thinking about following the lead of many other southern governors by turning down some of the stimulus money offered to Georgia.

Perdue's reasoning is that certain provisions - specifically, an expansion of unemployment insurance (UI) - will lead to higher taxes in Georgia in the long run.

In order to receive the funding allocated for unemployment insurance, Georgia must make two reforms to its current UI program: UI benefits must be expanded to cover part-time workers and those who are in extended training programs.

Many states already made these reforms to their UI programs years ago, and now is a great time for Georgia to catch up! With our state's unemployment rate at record highs, why is Sonny Perdue refusing to reform the current system?

Many other southern governors, including Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, have already rejected this funding for unemployment insurance. But, Perdue hasn't made up his mind yet!

NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE ACTION! Contact Sonny Perdue's office and let him know you favor accepting all stimulus money offered to Georgia and an expansion of unemployment insurance benefits!

To reach the governor...
by phone: 404-656-1776
by fax: 404-656-5947
by email: fill out this web form
in person: State Capitol, room 203


MAKE SURE SONNY PERDUE HEARS YOUR VOICE!



For more information, please visit the following websites:
Franklin Wants Perdue to Take Stimulus Money - AJC.com
Georgia Unemployment Reaches Record High - AJC.com
Perdue, Labor Commissioner Debate Taking Stimulus Money - AJC.com
Take the Money and Update the Rules - NELP.org
Unemployment Insurance Links - NELP.org
Unemployment Insurance Reform - Women's Policy Group

Today at noon, students and seniors from across the state came together on the North Steps of the capitol building in support of the Parent Protection Act. We held a press conference, where 2 students from A. Philip Randolph Elementary (where the idea for the bill originated) and a senior citizen affiliated with the Georgia Council on Aging spoke about why they support the passage of the Parent Protection Act (HB 37). There was a news crew there from the "Lawmakers" program on Georgia Public Broadcasting, so check it out tonight at 7pm on channel 8!

Stay tuned to the blog next week... I'll post videos from today's press conference, as well as from the 2/13 minimum wage press conference and a presentation to Masters of Social Work students, that was also featured on "Lawmakers" last month!

You're Invited!

WHAT? Growing Women's Power in Atlanta, a 9to5 Atlanta chapter meeting
(this will be the first of 9to5's monthly community dialogues.)

WHEN? Saturday, February 21st, 11am

WHERE? The Java Delight Cafe
4153C Flat Shoals Parkway
Decatur, GA 30034
Map

TOPIC: organizing collectively for workplace justice. Come learn how you can get involved in 9to5's movement!



See the online invitation HERE.

just in time for Valentine's Day....

Show your Server some Love

Sponsored by the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition

Join us in support of restoring the minimum wage for tipped workers (currently $2.13/hr) to 60% of the minimum wage.

Where: Danneman’s Coffee Shop
466 Edgewood Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30312
Map

When: Friday, February 13th (2/13!)
11:00 A.M.



Reasons to come (according to Anni):
1. Women like you will speak in support of raising the minimum wage for tipped workers! You'll hear about their experiences working for minimum wage - and you might be surprised by what they have to say!
2. Support a local business! Danneman's website boasts "great local micro-roasted coffee" and "good... food at moderate prices," as well as well as a space featuring "tall ceilings, handsome woodwork, large vintage windows, and midcentury furnishings such as lab tables and Navy chairs." Come check it out! (For more information: www.dannemans com.)



To view a flier with more information about this event, please visit the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition website.

How do you feel about the new stimulus plan??

Our U.S. Congress is working on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The House has already passed the stimulus plan and the Senate will soon be voting. If passed, some of the money will come to the state of Georgia, to some of our cities and also some school districts.

Locally, ten cities in Georgia have requested almost 3 billion dollars from the plan, including Atlanta, Alpharetta, Marietta, Acworth, and Athens. Proposed projects would put money into repairing old infrastructure and building new that could possibly add 30,000-40,000 jobs in Atlanta region alone. Also a priority to Atlanta is public safety, including hiring more police officers. Mayor Shirley Franklin states that “this is important to the city, to the state and important to the national economy.”

Meanwhile, Rep. John Lewis, who supports the stimulus plan, states on his website that the bill offers tax cuts to 95% of Americans and that the funds will go to increasing Pell grants, infrastructure, lowered healthcare costs thru technology upgrade as well as many other programs. His website shows as much as $8 billion as being requested to aid in projects such as Head Start; employment training for adults, youth and dislocated workers; Low-Income Home Energy Assistance; elderly services; the Food Stamps Program; and Medicaid.

Critics, however, look at this as increased government spending and increasing to our debt, rather than helping it. They urge for continued stimulus to the private sector rather than government programs. Adding to public criticism is the failure to pay taxes by several of President Obama’s administration choices including Tom Daschle.

Meanwhile, the news reports today that employers have slashed another 598,000 jobs in January - pushing the unemployment rate up to 7.6 percent!! According to CNNMoney, the latest job loss is the worst since December 1974, and brings job losses to 1.8 million in just the last three months. Economists project continued losses and economic downturn in 2009.
President Obama has said that the American people called for change in November and “that's what we're going to deliver”. How do you feel about the new stimulus package? Do you support it or oppose it? Have you contacted your legislators about your views? Share with us, but also don’t forget to share with your US Senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, as well as your district House and Senate reps. You can find how to contact them at www.votesmart.org.

Want to be a Citizen Lobbyist?

Have you heard of Women in the Halls? This program, sponsored by Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Georgia, brings women to the capitol every week during the legislative session to tell their state Congresspeople about their concerns, needs, and ideas. Direct communication with your legislators is an important way to hold them accountable to the needs of Georgia's women and families.

Have you ever wanted to be a Citizen Lobbyist? 9to5 encourages all of our members to contact their legislators about working women's issues on a regular basis -- here's a chance to do it directly! The Women in the Halls program takes place every Wednesday at 9am during the legislative session (from now until the beginning of April) and anyone can join! Meet in room 306 of the Coverdell Legislative Office Building, right across the street from the Capitol building on Mitchell Street. Training and information about lobbying will be provided on-site.

For more information about Women in the Halls, as well as contact information for the program coordinators, please visit the Women in the Halls website.


ALSO, PLEASE NOTE:
Through Women in the Halls, members of the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition and the Georgia Job/Family Collaborative will be lobbying our legislators to raised the minimum wage and pass the Parent Protection Act!

Minimum Wage Day: Wednesday, March 4th
Parent Protection Act Day: Wednesday, March 11th

Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved with 9to5's activities at these two lobby days, or contact our office for more information!

A day after the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed, the New York Times ran a column about the many working women who have taken a stand for their rights. In need of inspiration for the work that we're doing? Take a look...

Lilly’s Big Day

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times By GAIL COLLINS
Gail Collins Published: January 28, 2009

President Obama is scheduled to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law today.

“I’m so excited I can hardly stand it,” Ledbetter said recently after the bill passed the Senate.

Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter’s case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers.

(Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers’ salaries within the first six months on the job.)

Until the Supreme Court stepped in, courts generally presumed that the 180-day time limit began the last time an employee got a discriminatory pay check, not the first. In an attempt at bipartisan comity, the Senate decided to simply restore the status quo, rejecting House efforts to make the law tougher. Even then, only five Republican senators voted for it — four women and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is currently the most threatened of the deeply endangered species known as moderate Republicans.

Ledbetter, who was widowed in December, won’t get any restitution of her lost wages; her case can’t be retried. She’s now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit.

Another was Eulalie Cooper, a flight attendant who sued Delta Air Lines in the mid-’60s when she was fired for being married. Not only did a Louisiana judge uphold the airline industry’s bizarre rules requiring stewardesses to be young and single, Cooper was denied unemployment benefits on the grounds that by getting married she left her job “voluntarily.”

But she began a pattern of litigation that eventually ended the industry’s insistence that women needed to look like sex objects in order to properly care for passengers on airplanes. Next time you talk about US Airways Flight 1549’s spectacular landing on the Hudson River, remember that the three flight attendants who kept calm in the ditched plane were all women in their 50s and give a nod to people like Eulalie Cooper.

Patricia Lorance, an Illinois factory worker, went to court after her union and employer secretly agreed to new seniority rules that discriminated against the women who had been promoted in the post-Civil Rights Act era of the 1970s. Like Ledbetter, she lost her court fight because of a ridiculous ruling about timing, which had to be fixed by Congress.

Working at a series of lower-paying jobs after the factory closed, and then disabled by physical ailments, Lorance lost track of her case long before it finally wound its way through the Supreme Court. “But to this day, I am rather proud of myself because I was not a dumb person. I believe in just standing up and fighting for your own rights,” she said in a phone interview.

Ledbetter’s real soul sister is Lorena Weeks of Wadley, Ga. Weeks, now 80, had worked two jobs to support her orphaned siblings, then struggled with her husband to set enough money aside to assure their children would be able to go to college. A longtime telephone employee, she applied for a higher-paying job overseeing equipment at the central office. Both her union and the management said the job was unsuitable for a woman because it involved pushing 30-pound equipment on a dolly, even though Weeks regularly toted around a 34-pound typewriter at her clerical job.

Weeks v. Southern Bell helped smash employers’ old dodge of keeping women out of higher-paying positions by claiming that they required qualifications only men could fulfill. But it was a long, painful fight during which Weeks was terrified that she might lose her job entirely. “I felt like I was so alone, and yet I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do. Going back to the fact my momma had died working so hard. And I knew women worked and needed a place in the world,” she said.

It’s a good day for the feisty working women who went to court to demand their rights and the frequently underpaid lawyers who championed them. They’re strangers to one another; most of them made their stands and then returned to their ordinary lives. But they’re a special sorority all the same. And Lilly Ledbetter got to go to the inauguration and dance with the new president.

“Tell her congratulations,” said Lorena Weeks.



To see the original article online, please click here.

Breaking News!

Today, president Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- which overturns a 2007 Supreme Court decision that put a strict statute of limitations on the filing of lawsuits over pay inequities. Prior to today, these lawsuits had to be filed within 180 days of the first time the pay discrepancy took place. In Ledbetter's case, she was unaware that she was being paid less than a male counterpart for nearly 20 years! Now, with each paycheck that is unjust, the statute of limitations is extended 180 days further, meaning that women like Lilly, who don't realize they're not being paid an equal wage, can sue when it comes to their attention -- regardless of how long it's been happening.

What a great victory for working women!! To read about the bill, please click see the Associated Press article or the CNN article.


And... here's a peek into Obama's statement's as he signed the bill:

"...While this bill bears her name, Lilly knows this story isn't just about her. It's the story of women across this country still earning just 78 cents for every dollar men earn - women of color, even less - which means that today, in the year 2009, countless women are still losing thousands of dollars in salary, income and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime.

But equal pay is by no means just a women's issue - it's a family issue. It's about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition or child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where, when one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves, that's the difference between affording the mortgage - or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor's bills - or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month's paycheck to simple discrimination.

So in signing this bill today, I intend to send a clear message: That making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone. That there are no second class citizens in our workplaces, and that it's not just unfair and illegal - but bad for business - to pay someone less because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability. And that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook - it's about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals."