Jennifer Noyes, administrator of the Division of Economic Support at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, said Tuesday she hadn't yet seen the EEOC notice, but has already asked the department's legal officers for an opinion on what the department's options are. But Noyes disagrees with the argument that the program and the agencies lack oversight. At Legal Action of Wisconsin, staff attorney Pat Delessio says she and her associates see regularly the evidence that W-2 jobs are not living up to the program's goal of lifting people out of poverty. The biggest of those is eviction. What we see is women who go from Burger King to Taco Bell because Taco Bell pays 25 cents more an hour, or losing jobs because they go to work for temporary agencies.
Equal pay is still a problem.
It crops up whenever people are less able to take care of themselves. Shortly after Jones first uncovered the disparity in wages between men and women at Maxstaff, Maxstaff supervisors began telling employees on the company's shuttle vans not to talk with each other about what they were paid, or they could get fired. Yet the practice of forbidding employees from discussing wages with each other is widespread, she says, affecting many low-wage workers besides those coming off of welfare. The ability of employers to get away with the practice illustrates how ignorant many people are about their rights at work. People on W-2, single parents and people without skills are in a much more vulnerable position.