Handwriting, Not Handwringing

By Edith Schwede

Cleveland Women Working members have decided that wringing hands over the Reaganomics policies that include weakening EEO and Affirmative Action regulations will be far less effective than putting those hands to work writing letters: letters to the Washington lawmakers, letters to other public officials, letters to media that conduct public forums. The letter-writing effort is one part of the campaign being launched by CWW to prevent erosion of the gains made for women and minorities in the workplace since passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

On June 18, CWW held a press conference to announce "The Campaign to Defend Women's Rights". The campaign includes gathering signatures to petition lawmakers in Washington, meetings with public officials to gain support, and the massive letter-writing effort.

Special targets of the letter-writing drive are the drafters of the proposals that will kill or weaken the regulations:

-President Reagan, who is being urged by some officials to rescind Executive Order 11246, which calls for affirmative action from all companies holding federal contracts;

-David Stockman, head of the Office of Budget and Management, who controls the Vice President's Task Force on Regulatory Reform. The Task Force has directed the Department of Labor to revise regulations of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program (OFCCP), the agency which administers Executive Order 11246. Changes under consideration include reduction of the number of companies which must comply, reduction in the number of pre-award compliance reviews and changes in employers' sexual harassment liability;

-Rep. John Erlenborn (R-IL), who has proposed merging the OFCCP and the Equal Employment Oportunity Commission (EEOC);

-Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA), who has proposed rewriting Executive Order 11246 to eliminate back pay as redress for past discrimination;

-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who began hearings in June on a proposed constitutional amendment which would outlaw affirmative action altogether; and

-Rep. Robert Walker (R-PE) who is drafting a bill that would forbid the use of quotas and actually prohibit employers from having voluntary affirmative action programs.

The actions of the above-mentioned legislators and politicians are aimed at Executive Order 11246. This massive attack, coming from several directions, indicates first, how powerful the Executive Order has been as an anti-discrimination measure, and second, how deadly serious the present administration is about putting us in our place and returning to the good ol' boys practices of the good ol' days of preCivil Rights legislation.

Executive Order 11246 is not the only law under attack. Stockman's Regulatory Task Force is also looking at "reform" of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This review is focused on noise, cotton, lead and labelling. Thorne Auchter, head of OSHA, said a new rule on the control of cotton dust exposure was necessary because of questions regarding the textile industry's ability to absorb the cost of the standards imposed during the Carter Administration. Mr. Auchter recently ordered a "book burning" of pamphlets published under the previous administration which presented a "biased viewpoint" on the cotton dust issue. Mr. Auchter keeps busy; he is now working on abolishing "walkaround" pay for time spent accompanying an OSHA inspector visiting a site. He sees no need for legislating such pay. In his view, this is a function of

management or negotiation in bargaining sessions.

These are pieces of a total package of cuts in welfare, education, Social Security, food stamps, etc., which place the heaviest burden on those least able to sustain it: the workers who live on the borderline of security, locked into low-paying jobs, most vulnerable to shifts in the economy, able to survive only with subsidies and services. These workers, so many of them women, are double-whammied. Equity in the workplace is being de-institutionalized while supportive services are being cut.

What can possibly be the rationale for these actions? The new administration loves to use the phrase "cost-benefit analysis". An aura of mathematical certainty thus masks what is in reality a determined drive to cut down to size the previously powerless who now challenge the White Male Club. Their cherished reasons of excessive costs to business and government have never been objectively documented: they have selected their examples carefully; they have ignored the benefits of affirmative action; and they never mention that companies spend more on litigation against compliance than is spent on affirmative action plans.

CWW has compiled facts and figures on affirmative action costs to business and government. Actual dollar costs to business and government are miniscule. The banks, for instance, that wrote and implemented affirmative action programs spent an

LOCAL NEWS

average of 0.01 percent of gross revenues. In government, the OFCCP of the Department of Labor oversaw 350,000 companies, engaging nearly 40 million people, with a 1980 budget of less than 51 million dollars, about $1.27 for each employee covered.

Contrast these costs with the incalculable costs of 1) underutilization of talents and skills, 2) the depressed purchasing power of those who cannot find entry to decent paying jobs, and 3) the costs of subsidies and services that these classes of workers need for basic survival, including poverty-level pension benefits for women who worked for low wages all their working lives. True "cost-benefit analysis" must include the enormous economic benefits of affirmative action to our society, which far outweigh the dollars spent so far on affirmative action. People who earn more spend more on products and services, and that's good for business. People who earn more pay more in taxes, and that's good for government. People who earn a decent wage do not need subsidies and that's a further good for government. It is just bad business not to encourage motivated women by moving them up the career ladder. The pious proponents of Reaganomics tell us that growth in the economy is the only way to economic health-while stunting the career growth of talented and skilled workers.

The logic of this will not, however, sway those bent (continued on page 11)

Kathy Thomas: No New Trial

By Mary Walsh

On June 24, 1981, the Ohio Supreme Court, with its usual wisdom, decided unanimously that exclusion of expert testimony on the "battered wife syndrome" was not sufficient reason to grant Kathy Thomas a new trial.

Thomas was convicted of murder in 1978 after

shooting Reuben Daniels, with whom she had lived for several years and who had often beaten her. At her trial, during which she was strongly supported by the Goldflower Defense Fund, Kathy pleaded selfdefense and sought to introduce expert testimony on the subject of battered women to show her state of mind when she shot Daniels. The trial judge refused to allow the expert testimony.

Solely because the trial court refused to admit the expert testimony on battered wives and the peculiar state of mind which might prompt the shooting of the "battering husband,” the Court of Appeals ordered in a 2-1 decision that Thomas be given a new trial. The majority opinion contained a sympathetic and enlightened view of the particular problems faced by

a battered women. Sadly, the lone dissenter was Judge Blanche Krupansky, the only woman appeals judge in this district, who in her dissent set forth several reasons why expert testimony on the battered women syndrome should be excluded. These reasons, which included that Kathy's expert had had no personal contact with her and that the concept of a battered woman was within the knowledge of the jury and thus needed no expertise to explain it, were quoted with approval by the Ohio Supreme Court, and were even amplified:

Such expert testimony is inadmissible because it is not distinctly related to some science, profession or occupation so as to be beyond the ken of the average lay person. Furthermore, no general acceptance of the expert's particular methodology has been established....Expert testimony on the "battered wife syndrome" by a psychiatric social worker -to support defendant's claim of self-defense is inadmissible herein because (1) it is irrevelant and immaterial to the issue of whether defendant acted in self-defense at the time of the shooting; (2) the subject of the expert testimony is within the understanding of the jury; (3) the "battered wife syndrome" is not sufficiently developed, as a matter of commonly accepted scientific knowledge, to warrant testimony under the guise of expertise; and (4) its prejudicial impact outweighs its probative value. The Ohio Supreme Court also specifically rejected the rationale of and declined to follow a District of Columbia case which allowed expert testimony where the woman had had actual counseling by her expert and was in imminent danger at the time of the shooting. Therefore, it would seem that unless the opinion of the Ohio Supreme Court is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, to which it will be appealed, expert testimony on battered women may never be admissible in an Ohio court, whether to support a self-defense theory or for any other reason.....

July-August, 1901/What She Wants/Pag