Supreme Court rules: 'Fetal Protection' no excuse for sexual job discrimination

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SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1991 7 On March 20, in a decisive—but paradoxical—victory for workers' and women's rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited all employer "fetal protection" policies. The class action suit, Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, was the first before the Supreme Court to challenge a "fetal protection" exclusion policy.

The country's largest automobile battery manufacturer, Johnson Controls Inc., effectively barred "all women except those whose inability to bear children is medically documented" from jobs involving high exposure to lead. The case directly effects an estimated 25,000 women working with lead in manufacturing, and indirectly up to 20 million workers dealing with hazardous substances.

Justice Blackmun's majority opinion declared that federal law does not permit an employer to take fetal welfare into account in deciding whether to permit a pregnant or "potentially pregnant" woman to take a job.

Citing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (P.D.A.) of 1978, an amendment to the Civil Rights Act, Blackmun stated: "Johnson Controls has attempted to exclude women because of their reproductive capacity. Title VII and the P.D.A. simply do not allow a woman's dismissal because of her failure to submit to sterilization."

Among plaintiffs in the UAW's suit were Mary Craig, who chose to be sterilized rather than lose her job; Elsie Nason, a 50-year-old woman who was transferred to a lower-paying position; and Donald Penney, who was denied a leave of absence in order to lower the lead level of his blood while attempting to conceive a child.

Another Johnson Controls worker, Gloyce Qualls, a Black woman who submitted to sterilization, was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "I had no choice. I had bills to pay. I had to live."

Hypocrisy of "fetal protection"

Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law, Johnson Controls did not employ any women in battery-manufacturing jobs. Today, only 13 of 280 of these positions are held by women. At $20 an hour, these jobs are among the highest paid in Bennington County, Wisc., where the plant is located. Fetal protection policies "protected" women right out of higher-paying jobs in industry— where they are already grossly underrepresented.

Fetal protection policies have come about at a time when women's reproductive rights are increasingly threatened. These regulations must be viewed in conjunction with the government's overall attempts to control women's reproductive decisions.

Interestingly, exclusionary policies are not found in female-dominated, lower-paid jobs, such as electronic and semi-conductor production or clerical work, though known reproductive hazards from chemicals, low-level radiation, and VDTs exist.

Exposure to lead affects the neurological development of fetuses and young children and, because it remains in the bloodstream, an unborn child can be harmed even after exposure is discontinued. Evidence is accumulating that lead affects men's sperm and the health of their offspring as well.

Workplace safety for everyone The United Auto Workers Union (UAW) has maintained that employers must make the workplace safe for all workers and not discriminate against women. The Court's decision illuminates the fact that workers are having to choose between their jobs and their own health and ability to conceive and bear children.

While employers claim concern for future generations, their cynical bottom-line is the suits on behalf of children with birth defects caused by toxics in the workplace.

Unfortunately, this decision does not force bosses to clean up workplaces, it only allows women equal opportunity to hazardous working conditions.

Exposure to lead can cause damage to the brain, central nervous system and kidneys, anemia, and high blood pressure leading to heart disease and strokes. These are the risks Johnson Controls and other workers' still face in addition to their reproductive health.

Why don't employers substitute safer substances, institute stricter protective measures, or research and develop new methods of operation? Denise Zutz, Johnson Controls spokesperson, speaks for all employers, protesting, "We don't know how to make it any safer, and if we did, it would be fabulously expensive." (Newsweek, April 1, 1991)

Despite this victory against sexual discrimination, the Court's decision at best amounts to assuring women's "right" to risk reproductive damage. There isn't much choice involved when the alternatives are unemployment or low-paid "women's work"

The Supreme Court decision implies that by complying with federal law, corporations may be protected from lawsuits involving birth defects. The Court delares that if employers fully inform women of the risk, the basis for liability "seems remote at best."

Clearly, unions and women's organizations must continue to struggle for a real solution-the right to safe jobs at living wages that give workers the ability to support themselves and bear healthy children.

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Soviet troops in Vilnius, Lithuania. Gorbachev threatened same crackdown in Moscow if demonstration wasn't called off. 8 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1991 By GERRY FOLEY The confrontation in the Soviet Union— growing since the attempted military coup in Lithuania in January—-has now reached a new peak. At the end of last month, the Gorbachev leadership openly used troops to try to intimidate a demonstration in support of Boris Yeltsin, the main all-Union representative of the opposition.

A few days before the March 28 proYeltsin rally, Gorbachev decreed a ban on demonstrations in Moscow. The prohibition also came just in time to prevent any street protests against the price rises scheduled for April 2. Ironically, Yeltsin is a champion of the Shatalin 500-day program for rapid privatization, which logically calls for still more rapid and drastic price rises.

Yeltsin has tried to argue that transition to the market can be painless. Gorbachev's advisors have realistically explained that, since the market reforms require higher prices and unemployment, they can only be imposed by a strong government. There is thus a contradiction between Yeltsin's defense of the movement for democratic rights and his economic program.

This contradiction has been pointed up by the confrontation over the ban on demonstrations in Moscow. It is being sharpened by the spread of strikes, still mainly in the coal mines, demanding Gorbachev's resignation because of falling living standards under his market-reform-oriented government.

Thus, in The New York Times of March 28, Serge Schemann quoted a striking miner in Novokuznetsk, a coal-mining center, as saying: "We fight for Yeltsin. But we don't believe he can change anything quickly. It took centuries to build capitalism, and he's talking of 500 days. But we have to get rid of the Comunists. It's our only chance."

What does it mean to "get rid of the Communists" without restoring capitalism? It doesn't seem that any major force in the Soviet opposition movements has yet thought that through. But the pressure of the events is more and more forcing the participants in the struggles to do so.

The miner's statement goes against the hitherto prevailing view in the anti-totalitarian movement that Stalinist totalitarianism was the political expression of the collectivist economy. In fact, the concrete experience of the struggle against the totalitarian bureaucracy is proving that the opposite is the case.

There is a basic contradiction between a collective economy and the bureaucracy, and the historic reason for totalitarianism is the bureaucracy's need to cover that up to obscure the fact that while talking about defending socialism, it is actually pursuing its selfish parasitic interests.

In a fundamental sense, perestroika was designed to provide a new, more credible basis for the rule of the bureaucracy. The Moscow demonstration showed its failure.

Yeltsin: anti-totalitarian "hero"

The opposition movements in the Soviet Union up until now have had an anti-totalitarian character. That is, they have been directed against the all-embracing control of the bureaucratic state and single party, against the suppression of all political and social organizations independent of the Stalinist party-state, against a controlled press.

This explains why they include such a wide and contradictory spectrum of political and social programs.

The anti-totalitarians call themselves "democrats." But that is not a very precise term, because experience has not yet clarified what democracy means concretely in the USSR, and it is still clearer what they are against than what they are for.

Politics in the USSR and its constituent republics has continued to focus around the fight for the right to organize, to express political opposition to the ruling bureaucracy, and for political representation genuinely chosen by the people and able to act in accordance with its mandate.

Yeltsin, an enfant terrible of the bureaucracy turned populist politician, has emerged as the hero of the antitotalitarian opposition on the all-Union level. He denounced the power and privileges of the bureaucracy. On that basis, he won 80 percent of the vote in Moscow in the election for the all-Union Congress of People's Deputies (the new broader assembly of delegates from which Referendum vote was no victory for Gorbachev the Supreme Soviet is elected). He later was elected president of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation.

Then, Yeltsin took up the defense of the national-democratic movements challenging the central bureaucracy. His support for the Lithuanian government undermined Gorbachev's sanctions against the national-democratic regime, following the Lithuanian declaration of independence last March.

Yeltsin came to the aid of the elected Lithuanian government again in January, when Gorbachev and the Stalinist colonialists tried to overthrow it through a military coup. The anti-totalitarian opposition in Moscow brought out hundreds of thousands of people in defense of the rights of the Lithuanians.

In power, Yeltsin could turn out to be no less of a Russian chauvinist than the ruling bureaucracy. He argues that Russia has been exploited by the Soviet Union, and that it should put its own economic interests first.

But in the present situation, he, along with the anti-totalitarian opposition in Russia, has a vital interest in defending the movements of the oppressed nationalities.

Gorbacher's parliamentary model It was the rise of the national-democratic mass movements among the oppressed peoples that first breached the armor of the totalitarian system and first threw the ruling bureaucracy on the defensive.

Gorbachev's "pluralist" electoral system was designed to maintain the grip of the totalitarian machine by more subtle trickery. Only a mass movement could break through the hurdles. The first ones arose among the oppressed peoples-first in Armenia, then in the Baltics, in Moldavia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

In all these republics, except Azerbaijan, the national-democratic movements won control of the Supreme Soviets away from the Communist Party. Only in Azerbaijan did such a movement suffer a severe defeat, because it succumbed to anti-Armenian chauvism and, as a result, could be politically isolated.

From the very start, Gorbachev tried to block the development of these movements by repression. But he was restrained by the need to maintain his image as a democratizer.

This program of perestroika and glasnost involved, insofar as possible, replacing the old blatantly totalitarian methods with more political, "legal" ones, explicitly modeled on the "respectable" (apparently democratic but actually antidemocratic methods) of capitalist parliamentarianism.

For example, the new law on "anti-state" activity was defended by arguing that it was similar to the American Smith Act used to prosecute opponents of the system (including the Communist Party), and that all governments had the right to selves."

The totalitarian regime had been unable to stamp out the feelings of the peoples subjected to domination of the Great Russian chauvinist bureaucracy, especially among those forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union relatively recently-notably the Baltic peoples and the western Ukrainians.

Moreover, combined with national oppression, the bureaucracy's mockery of democracy was especially blatant. Forced assimilation was carried out in the name of internationalism. Many of the basic works of national history and literature were banned.

Any Communist Party leaders who tried to defend the rights and cultures of their peoples, such as Berklavs in Estonia in 1959 or Shelest in Ukraine at the end of the 1960s, were purged. All this was imposed by Moscow, and so the remedy seemed simpleself-government, a break from Moscow.

At the same time, in order to maintain an appearance of continuing the national policy of the revolutionary Soviet government under Lenin, the Stalinist regime also fostered the development of national intelligentsias, even if in a thwarted and mutilated form, with institutions of their own, unions of artists and writers and literary-political publications.

National movements-a standoff It was on the basis of these institutions that the national-democratic movements, such as the People's Fronts in the Baltics, developed.

Thus, the moment the Kremlin pulled back from the use of direct and thoroughgoing repression, national-democratic moveAleksander Zemlianichenko ments developed explosively.

In the Baltic countries, in a matter of months, they won the active support of the overwhelming majority of the oppressed nationalities in those republics. The fight for democracy, not only among the oppressed nations but in the Soviet Union as a whole, came to focus on them.

Although Gorbachev was forced to back off in the face of the mass national movements, he would not give an inch on the foundations of the Stalinist central state—a universal Soviet citizenship (depriving the smaller peoples of any possibility of defending themselves against being overwhelmed by Russians), a single all-Union army, maintaining Russian as the language of "inter-ethnic" communication, and keeping control of the essential economic levers in Moscow.

Unable to break the national movements, the Kremlin had to accept the development of a free press in the Baltics. It is obvious the Kremlin has no intention of reconciling itself to this, since the Baltic independent press is an example for the whole of the USSR and, in fact, some of it is in Russian. Attacks on printing plants have been central features of every attempted Soviet crackdown in the Baltics.

Working class—a "mighty force"

The national-democratic movements, especially in the Baltics, served as ice-breakers opening up the way for the rise of independent movements throughout the Soviet Union, including the independent workers' movement that appeared with the coal miners' strike in the summer of 1989.

The fate of all these movements was

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Yeltsin's contradiction is that he-like Gorbachev-supports the economic program that has lead to an increase in the crisis.

Rally in Moscow calls for Gorbachev's resignation.

SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1991 9 linked. In his speech to the congress of the Ukrainian national movement, Rukh, last October, the organization's chairman, Ivan Drach, pointed to this.

"It is quite clear today," he said, "after so many years of the perestroika fakers, after verbal sleight-of-hand about new approaches or the 'human factor,' after the real poltical problems were shouted down with empty noise and furious attacks on 'extremists, 'destructive elements,' and "separatists," that the perestroika government is seeking only to maintain itself in the saddle and put a bridie back on the working people.

"After all that, in 1989, a real perestroika started, which came as a surprise to the authorities although not to the democratic forces—the emergence in the political arena of such a mighty force as the working class. The miners' strikes, which were highly organized and determined, really shook the party-state power."

Gorbachev attempted again and again to set limits for the national movements. Amendments were proposed to the Soviet constitution to make it easier for Moscow to intervene in the republics. There was the special plenum of the CPSU on the national question in September 1989.

One after another, the laws adopted by the Supreme Soviets of the republics were struck down by the USSR constitutional court.

However, once the oppressed peoples had gained a measure of independence, they could not be stopped halfway. After living decades in a Stalinist straightjacket embroidered with invocations of internationalism and the brotherhood of the Soviet peoples, they were not going to be satisfied with any "renewed Union" offered by the heirs of the Stalinist state.

They would not think about any new relationship with the Soviet Union or any of its parts except the basis of independence. That has not meant a course toward national self-sufficiency or dependence on the West. That is indicated, among other things by the multiplication of treaties between the republics. In fact, the Soviet Union of Lenin's day developed out of treaties among the republics.

The struggle for national rights has led to advances in consciousness. When the Lithuanians declared independence last March, they found that they got nothing but words from the Western capitalist governments. The only effective support they got was from the other movements of oppressed people in the USSR and the Russian anti-totalitarians.

In the confrontation in Vilnius this January, the national-democrats found that their struggle required throwing out a program of price rises because it threatened to alienate and divide the masses.

And it was not just the price rises they jettisoned. At the same time, they dumped the whole perspective of compromise with Moscow defended by the market-reform premier, Kazimiera Prunskiene, a recent crossover from the Communist Party; and the "independent" Communist Party of Algirdas Brazauskas.

It was reportedly the "hard-line nationalists" who voted down the price rise proposal in the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet.

The meaning of privatization The likes of Prunskiene and Brazauskas offered the oppressed nations valuable lessons about what privatization concretely meant for the struggle against the bureaucracy.

The best example was the line of the "independent" CP. It was excommunicated by Gorbachev for going too far in its pretense of independence from Moscow, but continued to follow essentially the same strategy as its estranged big brother. To those who demanded the rooting out of the bureaucracy, it replied, in effect, "what bureaucrats? There's nobody here but us entrepreneurs." The way to eliminate bureaucracy, it said, was to privatize the state enterprises.

Many anti-totalitarians have thought that "radical" market reforms meant radical opposition to the bureaucracy. But then they started seeing bureaucrats turning up as "entrepreneurs."

That is logical enough, because the rise of the bureaucratic caste-for which the way was opened by the weakening of working-class institutions resulting from the civil war and the ruin of the economy-meant individuals enriching themselves at the expense of the masses (in the name of "socialism"). By converting themselves into entrepreneurs, they are only continuing the process.

In his speech to the October 1990 congress of Rukh, Drach presented some clear conclusions about this: "We are making every effort to prevent the reform of national ownership, when the party top echelon and its Siamese twin-organized crime-wants to convert it into their own private property."

Despite some anti-Bolshevik and religious rhetoric in Drach's speech, he sounded like the real Bolsheviks on some essential questions:

"In the so-called "regulated socialist market' program, the government has camouflaged a still more cruel exploitation of the working people. There is only one innovaton. Today everyone is going to be forced by 'economic conditions' to snatch their miserable morsels from the mouths of their neighbors. Treacherously, they [the party-state] are planning a war of all against all....

"All of this is to prepare the conditions for PHT. УХОН Alexandra Avakian a transition, more accurately a return from the present weak dictatorship to an open dictatorship."

The coup attempt in Vilnius Within a few years of launching perestroika, Gorbachev found that his promises of liberalization had opened a Pandora's box. In the past months, he has been making desperate attempts to get the lid back on, naturally starting with the national movements.

The aborted coup d'etat in Vilnius this January was the opening shot, and was recognized as such by the anti-totalitarian movements, as shown at the time by the mass mobilization in Moscow in its defense and by support offered by Yeltsin.

The anti-totalitarian movement in the Soviet armed forces, Shchit ["Shield"] issued a widely publicized report on the coup attempt that clearly exposed the involvement of the Soviet military and other repressive forces, such as the KGB and the MVD. It put responsibility for the attempt squarely on Gorbachev:

"The president of the USSR could not have not known about the planned coordinated actions of the Soviet army, MVD, and KGB. Such actions could not have been carried out without his personal approval. The participation of USSR military formations in the coup d'etat was planned and coordinated in advance with the approval of the center."

The defeat of the coup attempt was followed by a rapid increase in political tensions. The Baltic movements won overwhelming victories in referenda for total independence.

Preparing for the referendum The next test of strength was Gorbachev's attempt to get a mandate for maintaining a "renewed USSR" through an all-Union referendum on March 17. The proposal was worded in as sugar-coated way as possible:

"Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of people of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?"

The runup to the vote was marked by some very threatening statements in the party press. The March 8 issue the Soviet CP daily Pravda carried a speech by I. K. Polozkov, chairman of the Russian Communist Party, now apparently the leading spokesperson of the conservative wing of the CP.

Although Polozkov claimed to be speaking in defense of socialism against such figures as Yeltsin, he adopted blatantly reactionary language.

"A great world power stands on the brink between existence and nonexistence," he said. It was being endangered by "these "citizens of the world' who through the mass media they control are not bringing us the greatest achievements of world thought and culture. Their aim is to contaminate Soviet man, to deprive him of his national pride and honor.

"Today, we can see clearly their penchant for rallies, for whipping up hysteria, for all forms of theatricalism, going so far as to reduce the law making process to a well directed TV spectacle." Polozkov concluded by calling for "a broad union of all healthy forces to save the fatherland."

Polozkov said that the "counterposition" of conservatives and Gorbachevites in the CP was "a played out game." He said the difference was now between defenders of socialism and capitalist restorationists, who formed an "antipresidential [i.e., counter to Gorbachev] bloc."

Three days later, Pravda carried an article praising the military takeover in Poland in December 1981 and clearly suggesting that such a step might be necessary in the USSR.

The new draft Treaty of Union published in the days before the referendum included some sweeteners. But it also reconfirmed all the basic positions from which Gorbachev has refused to retreat, which taken together maintain the basic structures of the Stalinist state.

Gorbachev's referendum-a defeat Moscow and its press pulled out all stops to assure a "yes" vote. This was the last chance to avert chaos, they said, even civil war. Furthermore, it would assure satisfaction of all democratic aspirations. For example, the March 14 Pravda trumpeted:

"By saying 'yes' to the Union, you will be voting for overcoming the crisis, stabilizAlexandra Avakian ing the economy. ... Saying 'yes' to the Union, you will be taking a stand for avoiding unemployment, strengthening the social protection of the underprivileged."

Nonetheless, Gorbachev suffered a stinging defeat. This was played down by the U.S. capitalist press, which generally sees Gorbachev as the best alternative possible in the USSR, despite Yeltsin's more radically pro-capitalist statements. But in the circumstances, it was quite clear. The majority for the Union was provided by those areas where the bureacracy can still rig the electoral process.

In Moscow, the "yes" vote got only 50.2 percent. In Leningrad, where only 60 percent of voters went to the polls, there was a bare majority for the proposition. In Kiev, capital of Ukraine, the "yeses" were only 44 percent. At the same time, the Ukrainian legislature's declaration of sovereignty, which calls for an independent army and currency, was reconfirmed by 83 percent.

The six republics with national-democratic governments boycotted the vote altogether, and the Kremlin could only set up polls there on army bases and in big factories directly controlled from Moscow.

This new defeat for Gorbachev prepared the way for the confrontation in Moscow on March 28, when perhaps half-a-million people defied the ban on demonstrations declared by the chief of the bureaucracy and stood up to 50,000 troops.

A parasitic caste So far, every time the bureaucratic regime has tried to reassert control, its grip has further weakened. Gorbachev has suffered the same fate as all previous bureaucratic liberalizers. Once the masses have gotten the slightest opening to express themselves and mobilize, to gain some political experience, they have begun very quickly to rise up against the bureaucracy in general.

This reflects the fact that the bureaucracy is essentially parasitic and rules on the basis of false pretences that cannot stand up once the masses have free speech and freedom to organize.

Today, for a number of reasons—the prolonged stagnation of the nationalized economy, the fact that the regime has ruthlessly suppressed all socialist critics of the system while tolerating pro-marketeers-opposition to the bureaucracy has tended to take on pro-capitalist expressions.

At the same time, given an opportunity to gain concrete experience in struggles, the masses have been learning that the market schemes offer neither economic solutions nor democracy.

It is not automatic that mass forces will start calling explicitly for socialist democracy. That depends on the emergence of a conscious socialist leadership, a revolutionary socialist party. But the conditions for that are becoming more favorable.

Like any revolutionary situation, the breakdown of the bureaucratic order involves the danger of violent clashes. But it also offers great hopes, perhaps the greatest of our time.

It is not just the Soviet masses who are learning in practice that they need economic democracy. They can show working people throughout the world how they can liberate themselves-not through the "free market" but by taking democratic control of all the forces that shape their lives.

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italist restoration in East Germany no success story