Category: Social Issues

Beware These 5 (Perfectly Legal) Discriminatory Hiring Practices

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 13 Comments

Admit it, Bitch Nation: you missed us and our relentless griping about labor rights during our two-week summer hiatus. Well cheer up, people, because the Bitches are BACK (and still griping about labor rights)!

Today’s topic: discriminatory hiring practices.

One of our most popular articles to date is our list of illegal job interview questions. In that post, we explained how how there are laws in place to mitigate discriminatory hiring practices. An employer can’t ask a job candidate’s age, for example, to avoid ageism when hiring.

If you’re on the job hunt, you should familiarize yourself with the questions a potential employer can’t ask you. Know your rights lest you unwittingly allow an employer to use your personal demographics (rather than your job qualifications) to exclude you from a job opportunity.

Yet despite all the things an employer can’t legally ask in a job interview… some weaselly fuckers still find ways to introduce bias into their hiring practices. In fact, a lot that can happen during job applications and interviews probably should be illegal… but isn’t.

Let’s go over some discriminatory hiring practices that are somehow still legal. Y’know, before we get to the inevitable pro-labor call to action. ¡Viva la revolución, comrades!

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Inclusive Finance and the Financial Feminist Summit: With Bravely Go’s Kara Perez

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") Leave a comment

Bitch Nation, it’s time we talk about inclusive finance. It’s a nebulous concept! What constitutes inclusive access to financial products and education? How can we make our economic processes more inclusive of diverse populations? And if inclusivity is the goal, exactly who is currently being excluded?

As you know, I am too pretty to work hard lazy and averse to doing my own research on such an important yet complex topic. So naturally, I invited an expert to do my homework for me.

Enter the indomitable Kara Perez! Owner and founder of Bravely Go, activist for inclusivity and representation in financial education and economic opportunities, and all-around bad-ass. You guys… we are so lucky she lets us hang out with her.

Kara joined me to explain how we can embrace inclusivity in financial media and education and to tell me all about her upcoming event, the Financial Feminist Summit. Our conversation inspired me. It motivated me to do better for my community and my world. And it increased my hair’s natural luster by 32%.

Read on for wisdom and realness from Kara Perez.

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How to Use Labor Shortages to Your Advantage

How to Use Labor Shortages to Your Advantage

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 12 Comments

Labor shortages? With a 6% unemployment rate? On the heels of a recession and global pandemic? Seriously?

Seriously. If you’re like me, you’ve seen the signs hanging in almost every restaurant, coffee shop, and gas station window you’ve walked past. “Now hiring! Check our website for details!” But there’s something off about them. Usually such signs have a cheerfully neutral tone. But these are radiating powerful desperation stink.

“We’re hiring! Like, SERIOUSLY hiring. Literally every role is open! Do you want my job? You can have it! We have signing bonuses. If you show up all five days your first week, I will give you my cat. Don’t get me wrong, I love my cat like a son—but if someone doesn’t help me bus these tables, the fabric of my reality will unravel all around me lol.”

When employers are desperate for employees, they’re weak. And when they’re weak, you are strong. You can use this moment as an opportunity to claw back lost ground.

But situations like these have been super rare in recent history. Honestly, unless you’re a Boomer or older, this really hasn’t happened in your lifetime! (Yes, to my eternal surprise, BGR does have enthusiastic Boomer and Silent Gen readers. We salute you—the few, the proud, the kickass—for enduring our 90s pop culture references and ageist hissy fits with grace and poise.) Younger readers will be forgiven for not knowing how to take advantage of it.

So that’s what we’ll teach you today! C’mon, finance, let’s get fin~nancial!

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If you want to eat the rich, stop feeding Amazon.

If You Want To Eat the Rich, Stop Feeding Amazon

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 39 Comments

I’ve been waiting for years for Americans to stop feeding Amazon. We had a good chance last week. Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama had the opportunity to form a union. But it didn’t go well. It wasn’t even close. By a margin of two to one, warehouse workers voted against it.

It’s a really disappointing outcome. But it’s also not surprising. Labor unions are weak in America.

You know who isn’t weak? Amazon.

The world’s largest retailer is one of the most powerful entities on the face of the planet. And their union-busting policies are robust, well-funded, and prodigious.

According to many reports, they paid $10,000 every day to anti-union consultants who created an environment of pervasive secrecy, fear, and misinformation. Amazon spies on its employees and fires labor organizers. Bessemer workers were bombarded with anti-union messages in every private space from bathroom stalls to their personal phones. They forced their employees to attend several hours of anti-union propaganda meetings every week filled with ominous warnings about the “union threat” to their jobs. And they fired organizers, made fake social media accounts, and even changed traffic light patterns. They even flat-out told workers they’d lose their jobs if there was a union—all for the single purpose of discouraging the workers from using their constitutional right to organize with each other.

And it worked.

I knew it would. Story after story has made it incredibly clear that Amazon doesn’t give a flaming hot shit about the well-being of their employees. To an extent that is downright cartoonishly villainous! And they don’t have to, because they won’t face any consequences for it.

No legal consequences, because everything they’ve done is perfectly legal. 

And no business consequences, because despite everything, you’re still shopping there.

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Sexual Harassment: How to Identify and Fight It in the Workplace

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 15 Comments

When I hear about our followers enduring sexual harassment in the workplace, I wish I had the power to turn into a centaur wielding a flaming sword. I would burst into their workplace to trample the sexist bullies under my mighty hooves. Then I’d destroy filing cabinets and computers and shit with my flaming sword just for good measure. And I’d do it all while screaming the Misogyny Speech at the top of my lungs.

Valkyrie on a pegasus, flying in to destroy sexual harassment.

In other words: I feel heckin’ strongly about workplace sexual harassment. It makes me a sad panda.

“Fighting back” or “doing something about it” is easy enough in theory. But when your livelihood is on the line, ending the harassment (and punishing harassers) gets a lot more complicated. It can affect your mental health, your physical safety, and your financial security.

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One Easy Thing All Allies Can Do to Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 19 Comments

If you’re a rad intersectional ally who wants to make life fairer for everyone, there’s one incredibly easy thing you can do—right now—to close the gender and racial wage gap. It has to do with pay transparency. It’s an incredibly powerful form of activism, and it can be done by almost anyone. Are you ready? Here it is…

Tell your coworkers how much money you make.

Especially women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, and any one else who is part of a historically marginalized or exploited group.

And be specific and honest! No ranges, no euphemisms, just the exact number that appears on your paycheck. Don’t skip over any bonuses, raises, or other perks you’ve earned or negotiated, such as extra vacation time, remote work days, or tuition reimbursement.

Pay transparency is a tremendous boon to yourself as well as them. And we need it now, more than ever. Here’s why.

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How To Get an Abortion (Including an Affordable, Safe, and Discreet Self-Administered One At Home)

How To Get an Abortion

Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 34 Comments

Sometimes Piggy and I feel like we’ve written about every topic under the sun. Then we realize we haven’t written a guide on how to get an abortion. And we realize that no, indeed, Bitches Get Riches has only scratched the surface of topics related to finance, feminism, and fucks not given.

Abortion access has a staggeringly enormous impact on finances, whether you count that from a personal financial level or a global economic level. Yet it’s one of the least talked-about subjects in this space.

As an Angry Internet Feminist®, I’d love nothing more than to burn bright with the flame of moral outrage and say it’s because people are cowards. But I actually think a lot of people are intimidated by the topic because it’s a genuinely complex one to research, with laws varying by state and changing all the time. But it’s that complexity that makes it such an important topic to share with you, our readers.

We dream of a future where there are no barriers for anyone to seek out this common, safe, and morally neutral medical procedure. But for many people throughout the world, that future isn’t coming quickly enough.

So today we’re going to walk you through how to get an abortion! Including information on how to self-administer an abortion safely, affordably, and discreetly if you live in an area hostile to reproductive rights.

Today’s discussion obviously mentions pregnancy loss. We also touch on the logistical challenges of managing unsupportive partners and parents, but it’s pretty tame. No gory medical talk; no sexual violence.

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The Most Impactful Financial Decision I’ve Ever Made… and Why I Don’t Recommend It

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 46 Comments

Much is made in personal finance circles about personal responsibility, attributing success and failure to a particular financial decision. Not in the weird, political, shaming-you-for-being-born-poor way, but in the here-is-how-you-game-the-system-to-get-ahead-now-don’t-we-all-feel-clever kind of way.

In many respects, it’s solid advice! We talk about how making decisions based on ethical consumption saves you money and the planet; how you should be mindful and careful of where your money goes, lest you waste it on shit you don’t actually like or need; how every day the choices you make affect your financial future in large and small ways!

For a bunch of money nerds, gamifying personal finance by connecting calculated decisions to building wealth is exciting stuff. I’m getting a little hot under the collar just thinking about it!

Oo-la-la, hit me with that strong ROI, baybee...
Oo-la-la, hit me with that strong ROI, baybee…

I’ve made some pretty big money decisions in my time. Some decisions were purely financial. Others were personal decisions with a big financial impact. Sometimes I chose right. Sometimes I really, really chose wrong.

Today I want to tell you about one of the biggest personal financial decisions I’ve ever made… and why I would never recommend it to anyone else.

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Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 2: Racial and Gender Inequality

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 3 Comments

This is Part 2. Click here to read Part 1.

Hello friends, and welcome back to Everything Hurts and I’m Dying with your hosts, the Bitches!

Last week I hit you with a massively depressing article on how the coronavirus has simply exacerbated problems the United States already had before the pandemic ever reached our shores. If you had the mental fortitude to wade through all that, then you have my admiration and respect. Can I also get you a cup of tea and a massage? You earned it.

If not, here’s what you missed:

  • Coronavirus took an already unfair and unaffordable health insurance industry and exacerbated the problem, throwing still more Americans into medical debt and outright killing others who couldn’t afford treatment.
  • Coronavirus illuminated the problems labor rights activists have been fighting to fix for decades in stark relief by the mass unemployment that followed pandemic lock-down relief efforts.
  • The eviction epidemic in the United States, which was already at crisis levels, became an utter catastrophe when low-income workers who were recently laid off couldn’t pay their rent anymore. Eviction and rent moratoriums were but a band-aid on the wound.

All of these issues disproportionately affect low-income and impoverished Americans. So this week, in Part 2, I’m going to address the demographics who are disproportionately represented among the poor and low-income. Hope you didn’t expect sudden egalitarianism in the midst of a pandemic and recession!

Let’s get to it.

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Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights

Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 8 Comments

This article continues in Part 2.

My fellow Americans… we’re currently in month 784 of 2020, aka The Plague Times, so let’s take stock:

It’s… a lot, I know. The facts are grim, and they’re only getting grimmer.

But if you’re feeling like all of this death, economic destruction, and tragedy came out of nowhere, I have even worse news for you: it didn’t. For the sad effects of the pandemic are neither sudden, isolated, nor unpredictable.

Rather, they are the results of a system that has been balancing on a precipice for decades. A global pandemic was simply the last push needed to send this car over the cliff and hurtling spectacularly to the rocks below.

The coronavirus has singlehandedly revealed the pre-existing conditions our country has been ignoring, denying, and dismissing since dinosaurs Ronald Reagan roamed the Earth White House.

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