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Urge Labor Department to Keep Collecting Data on Women Workers
Action Needed:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the Department of Labor, has announced that it will stop collecting employment data on women. Please tell the BLS and your Members of Congress that this information is absolutely essential, and its elimination will ultimately lead to an increase in workplace inequality. The BLS claims that the decision to eliminate collection is related to the lack of demand for the numbers, but the real reason relates to conservatives' intention to downplay women's important economic role and the disparities in their pay, promotion and job assignments. By sending messages to your representatives and directly to the BLS, we may be able to stop this conservative move to "disappear" women.
Timing, as always, is vital. The comment period ends on Feb. 22 and we need you to contact the Bureau of Labor Statistics as soon as possible. We cannot allow the government to eliminate this important source of economic data that informs good public policy.
Take action NOW or continue reading for more information.
Background:
Women's growing influence in this nation's economic life is undeniable, and we know this because of information collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). From BLS data we can see that women hold nearly half of the nation's non-farm payroll jobs -- 63.7 million jobs to be exact -- up from almost a third in 1964.
The BLS announced in late December its intention to stop collecting this important information. The BLS claims that one factor in their decision is the burden the data collection places on employers. The Bureau fails to inform us, however, that the Current Employment Statistics (CES) Survey is hardly burdensome - it is mandatory in only five states: California, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The CES survey compiles information from over 300,000 businesses, and is considered to be the most reliable data for tracking month-to-month changes in employment. Also, the CES is critical to lawmakers, providing information necessary to crafting public policy that is beneficial to all women.
The federal government's plan to dispense with this routine data collection is an attempt to erase the statistics that identify the glaring inequalities between men and women in the workplace. NOW also notes that this decision is part of a larger effort to erase socio-economic data about women from federal web sites ? as well as from government agency concerns in general.
Several recent articles detail this regressive Bush administration effort. Read Making Women's Issues Go Away" or download Missing: Information about Women's Lives" from the National Council for Research on Women.
Reps. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues, held a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 12, to protest the BLS move and promised to express their concern directly with the agency.
The BLS is required to provide a 60-day comment period in which anyone can publicly respond to this request. Feminist activists should relish this opportunity to help maintain the data necessary to identify women's needs and to derail this disgraceful effort of the Bush administration to make women disappear.
Again, take action now — please send a letter to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can use our suggested language or compose your own message. Thanks for your participation -- together we can make change.
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