Today’s Wall Street Journal “Review” has an interesting lead article by Joanne Lipman entitled:  “Women at Work: A Guide for Men: Even the most well-intentioned male managers can be clueless when dealing with women in the workplace.” 

She says that men could use a career guide about women — she provides an eight point guide — because men “are often clueless about the myriad ways in which they misread women in the workplace every day. Not intentionally. But wow. They misunderstand us, they unwittingly belittle us, they do something that they think is nice that instead just makes us mad. And those are the good ones.”

Link:  http://www.wsj.com/articles/women-at-work-a-guide-for-men-1418418595

A recent article in the New York Times was entitled “When Women’s Goals Hit A Wall,” by Claire Cain Miller.  She reports on a new study of Harvard Business School alumni which found that “women in business overwhelmingly want high-achieving careers even after they start families. The problem is mismatched expectations between what they hope to achieve in their careers and family lives and what actually happens, both at work and at home.”

The study found that “among those working full time, men were significantly more likely than women to have direct profit-and-loss and personnel management responsibility. Fifty-seven percent of men were in senior management positions, compared with 41 percent of women, and fewer women than men said they were satisfied with their careers.”

Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/upshot/even-among-harvard-graduates-women-fall-short-of-their-work-expectations.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar

Finally, you may remember the sad case of Henry’s Turkey – an EEOC disability lawsuit filed against Henry’s Turkey Service for abusing intellectually disabled men for years.  We wrote about it a number of times. 

On May 3, 2013 we reported about the $240,000,000 jury verdict (later reduced):  “Intellectually disabled workers at Henry’s Turkey Service in Iowa were paid only $65 dollars per month eviscerating turkeys on an assembly line, we posted last September.  

In an ADA case brought by the EEOC, an expert witness said that the company exploited the workers because they had intellectual disabilities, and simply did not know better.  She stated that the employer’s conduct “including acts of deliberate misrepresentation” about wages and expenditures, deprived the workers of “economic independence and self-sufficiency.” The company “took advantage of the workers … knowing that they would not likely be discovered because the workers were disabled.”  

The New York Times just did a poignant piece spotlighting one of “Henry’s boys,” who, when he 18:

“was selected to live and learn basic skills at a ranch in Texas’ Hill Country. The operation, Henry’s Turkey Service, trained Mr. Jones and dozens of other young men like him — including his brother — in the artificial insemination of turkeys: namely, to catch and milk the toms, and rush the semen to the henhouse.

The men became proficient in this dirty job, and a demand developed for their services. Gradually, the company dispatched crews to work at turkey plants in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and South Carolina, moving employees around like chess pawns to meet the needs of clients.

Most of the operations eventually closed, leaving only a bunkhouse in Atalissa, Iowa, where Carl Wayne Jones wound up, and one here in Newberry, where Leon Jones landed.

The owners of Henry’s Turkey Service maintained that they had taken in men whom no one else wanted. They paid them a subminimum wage under a federal law — one they abused — that permits lower wages for people with disabilities, based on productivity. They deducted most of the men’s earnings to cover room, board and other expenses. And they allowed their Atalissa bunkhouse to descend into squalor, neglect and abuse.”

It’s a sad, sad story, made personal.

Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/separated-from-brother-left-to-toil-far-from-home.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar