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Jewish World Review June 28, 2006 / 2 Tamuz, 5766 When sexism claims are a real hoot By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
You've probably heard of Hooters — the restaurant chain known
for attracting male customers by hiring waitresses who are well-endowed and
dressed to show it.
The firm now employs more than 30,000 people. Some would
consider this a success story, but our government didn't. Not because
Hooters is using sex to sell — but because its waitresses are — get
ready — women!
"Discrimination!" cried the federal government's Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The business of Hooters is food, said the government, and "no
physical trait unique to women is required to serve food." EEOC lawyers
demanded Hooters produce all its hiring data, and then grilled Hooters for
four years. Mike McNeil, Hooters' vice president of marketing, told "20/20"
the EEOC bureaucrats demanded to look at reams of paperwork. "Employee
manuals, training manuals, marketing manuals — virtually everything that's
involved in how we run our business . . . "
The EEOC then issued a set of demands. First, it defined a class
of disappointed males who had not been hired by the company. The EEOC said,
according to McNeil: "We want you to establish a $22-million fund for this
mythical 'class' of dissuaded male applicants. We want you to conduct
sensitivity training studies to teach all of your employees to be more
sensitive to the needs of men."
I suspect Hooters' customers are mostly men who think the firm
is quite sensitive to their needs, thank you — and that there would indeed
be a class of disappointed males if the government insisted men do the jobs
of Hooters girls.
Typically, companies assaulted by EEOC lawyers just pay up to
avoid ruinous legal fees, but Hooters fought back, cleverly, not just in
court, but in the court of public opinion. Hooters waitresses marched on
Washington, chanting, "Save our jobs." A burly Hooters manager dressed as a
Hooters waitress posed for cameras, beard and all, demonstrating what a
"Hooters Guy" might look like.
That was a hoot, and it may have worked. Lawyers representing
male applicants accepted an out-of-court settlement of $3.75 million, a
fraction of the $22 million that had been demanded. The EEOC dropped its
demands for sensitivity training; Hooters agreed to create more jobs like
busboys and managers, which didn't have to be performed by women.
Sears found itself in the EEOC's cross hairs because more men
than women held jobs selling things like lawn mowers and appliances. The
disparate numbers themselves were proof, said the government, that Sears
discriminated against women.
Sears denied discriminatiing: "We asked women to do those jobs.
It's just that few women want to sell things like lawn mowers."
Is that too politically incorrect a concept for government
lawyers to get? Men and women do have different interests. Go to any
Wal-Mart and you'll see women looking at clothes, men in the hardware
department. There are exceptions, of course, but the sexes do tend to have
different interests.
More men selling lawn mowers and more women selling cosmetics
does not imply evil discrimination that requires armies of lawyers from the
State. Show me women who want to sell lawn mowers but are being required to
sell cosmetics instead — or men who want to sell cosmetics but have to sell
lawn mowers — and we have grounds for discussion. But if the women choose
the cosmetics counter, any discrimination is their own.
The EEOC was unable to produce any women who would complain that
they'd been discriminated against, so Sears finally won the suit. The $20
million the litigation cost was passed on to us customers.
Have these and other EEOC excesses embarrassed the government
into shrinking the EEOC? Of course not. It now has 2,400 employees, and
spent $326.8 million in 2005 — millions more than the year before.
Government keeps growing, and as it grows, it feeds on our money, erodes our
freedom and defies our common sense.
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© 2006, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
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