#

NATIONAL NEWS

Bills Introduced to Revise Social Security

Representative Mary Rose Oakar, chair of the Special Task Force on the Treatment of Women and the Elderly, has introduced in Congress a six-bill legislative package designed to remedy many of the inequities toward women inherent in the Social Security system.

The six bills include the first two listed bills which deal with the issue comprehensively, and four smaller bills which concentrate on correcting the isolated inequities that widows, widowers and divorced individuals must endure. The following is a brief summary of each bill:

1) Mandatory Earnings Sharing: Provides that a married couple share equally earnings credits for purposes of computing old age retirement and/or disability for the period of their marriage. The survivor of the marriage will be credited with 100 percent of

of their marriage (applies only to future benefits, but applies to all surviving spouses on the rolls at the time legislation is enacted)..

4) Transition Benefit: Provides for the payment of a transition benefit for three months to the spouse of an individual who has worked in covered employment, upon the death of that individual or their divorce, if the spouse has attained age 50 and is not immediately eligible for benefits. The benefit received is equal to 71.5 percent of the PIA of the covered individual, or if the eligible spouse's PIA is higher, he/she will receive the three-month benefit ..based on that PIA.

5) Disabled Widows/Widowers Under 60: Provides that the disabled widow/widower's benefits to

which they have become entitled before attaining age 60 will not be less than 71.5 percent of the deceased individual's PIA. It also insures that there is no reduction in the benefit on account of age. The present benefit for the disabled widow/widower is based on 50 percent of the deceased individual's PIA and is picked up at age 50.

6) Divorced Spouse of a Late Marriage: Provides that a divorced spouse may qualify for benefits on -the basis of a-marriage which lasted five years after the younger spouse reached age 50 (the present law requires a 10-year duration of marriage).

-Ohio Report

Vol. 6, No. 3

the combined total wages for the period of the marEEOC Guidelines on Sexual Harassment

riage.

2) Voluntary Earnings Splitting: Provides the option to a married couple to split their earnings credits during time of marriage equally. When the couple

LNS Women's Graphics

agrees to split earnings, and one spouse is not fully insured, that spouse becomes insured and is eligible for benefits on a fully insured basis.

If a couple is divorced, they have two years after the divorce to opt to split their earnings record for the period of their marriage. If they choose not to split their earnings, and they both retire at the same time, each will receive a benefit based on 75 percent of the combined primary insurance amount (PIA).

3) Inheritance of Earnings Credits by Surviving Spouse: Provides that the surviving spouse, married five or more years immediately prior to the individual's death, inherits 100 percent of the earnings credited to the deceased individual during the period

EEOC Guidelines

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued interim guidelines on onthe-job sexual harassment which define the duty of employers under federal laws which prohibit such conduct. The guidelines provide clarification in the sex discrimination area of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, stating explicitly that unwelcome sexual advances are unlawful whether verbal or physical in nature.

Three basic criteria were established for determining whether an action constitutes unlawful behavior: --if submission to the conduct is either an explicit or implicit term or condition of employment;

-if submission to or rejection of the conduct is used as a basis for an employment decision affecting the person rejecting or submitting to the conduct; or -if the conduct has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with an affected person's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

.

Under the guidelines, an employer is responsible for the actions of his/her supervisory employees or agents, and in some cases, for the acts of others when the employer or a supervisory employee knows of, or should have known of, the behavior.

An employer may refute apparent liability for the offending actions of a person other than a supervisor, employee or agent by showing that immediate corrective action was taken.

In order to prevent harassment, the guidelines propose that employers affirmatively raise the subject, express strong. disapproval, develop appropriate in-

Government Pays

(HerSay)-Women bindery workers and would-be

Women Farmers Lose bindery workers at the Government Printing Office

اتر

(HerSay)—Women in developing countries do about 70 percent of all agricultural labor, yet their work is not counted statistically as part of the economy, according to Patsy Mink, former Hawaii Congresswoman who now heads Americans' for Democratic Action.

Mink says that most of this work, occurs in subsistence level farming, and that food the women produce is used to feed the family, and not to sell. Most. new agricultural methods, Mink says, are aimed at training farmers to produce crops for sale, and aren't taught to women. As a result, women who grow their families' food not only don't get counted as productive workers because they don't make a profit, but also miss out on scientific help in improving their crops.

The former Congresswoman estimates that as much as 10 percent of the world's food is produced by women.

Page 4/What She Wants/June, 1980

won a multimillion-dollar victory in a 6-year-long sex discrimination suit against the government. Twentyeight of the women had been paid less than males doing similar work, and 296 other women, a federal court ruled, had been denied access to the jobs because of their sex. The award is expected to total $16 million in back pay and future earnings.

house sanctions, and inform employees of their right to raise the issue of harassment under Title VII.

-Ohio Report Vol. 6, No. 3

Women Work Triple Time

(HerSay)-The Washington-based Worldwatch Institute is warning that the home should no longer be considered a feminine domain as increasing numbers of women join the worldwide workforce. The Institute says that today nearly half the world's adult women are employed outside the home. However, Senior Worldwatch Researcher Kathleen Newland calls this international equal opportunity a

LNS/cpf

"recipe for overwork" unless the imbalance between male and female workloads, specifically household chores, changes. ́.

Newland says that so far only one side of the traditional division of labor has broken down-that is that women are working outside the home. However, the trend toward more women working for pay has not been matched by an increased involvement of men in unpaid work.

A study of households in 12 countries, reports Newland, shows that the total number of hours wage-earning women spend working, at home as well as on the job, surpasses the total working hours of either men or non-employed women by as many as 10 to 15 hours a week. According to Newland, if employed women with families also aspire to leadership positions, their extra hours of work can amount to working a triple day.

First Egalitarian Jewish Divorce

(HerSay)-Traditional Jewish divorce laws that deny a woman a religious divorce unless consent is -given by her husband were overturned recently. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association has granted Sheryl Friedman the first "egalitarian" Jewish divorce.

Friedman brought her case before a Jewish tribunal after her former husband, who had himself

remarried, refused to give her a "get", a traditionall bill of divorcement. Without this permission from her former husband, a Jewish woman cannot com plete a religious divorce.

Friedman's divorce will be honored by Reformed Jewish congregations. However, her children by a later marriage may be regarded as illegitimate by other more conservative denominations.