I was fortunate enough to get a press ticket to tonight’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation 20th annual Media Awards at Nokia Live. Personally I hate awards shows, but I’ll get free food, and possibly meet famous gay and gay-adjacent folks like T.R. Knight, and Kathy Griffin (yay!). And it’s all in the name of gayness, so it can’t possibly be too bad. My goal is also to get a photo with Nichelle Nichols by the end of the night. I’m not a schmoozing, falling-all-over-celebrities type of person. I’m a boring, wonky news lady, but I’m gonna have to get my schmooze on just this once. Let’s see what happens…

Coverage starts tonight around 7 p.m. PST — maybe a little earlier if I can get to my seat on time.

Photo by duchamp

Here’s a tally of the bloodbath that took place yesterday and the week before. On Monday alone, apparently 65,000 jobs were cut in the U.S. and around the world. Not good times:

Home Depot: 7,000 jobs and 34 stores (major indicator of real estate market, and new homes)

Caterpillar: 20,000 jobs (major indicator of all construction and development)

Texas Instruments: 3,400 jobs (all those poor 11th graders…)

Microsoft: 5,000 (their first job cut ever)

Target: 1,500 workers

Boeing: 10,000 jobs lost projected in 2009

Corning: 3,500 workers

Starbucks: 7,000 jobs and 300 stores (there were too many anyway — there are three Starbucks in my neighborhood, all within walking distance!)

DuPont: 4,000 contractors and 2,500 jobs

Phillips: 6,000 jobs

AOL: 700 jobs (wait — who still uses AOL other than my mom?)

ING Group: 7,000 workers

Sony/Erickson: 5,000 jobs

Pfizer: 19,500 jobs (thanks in part to a merger with Wyeth)

Harley Davidson: 1,000

Sprint/Nextel: 8,000

If it’s any consolation, McDonald’s profits are up 80%… I guess people are all over that damn dollar menu.

(Sources here and here)

Photo by Seattle Municipal Archives

Are you considering blowing the whistle at your job because you’re a witness to sexual harassment? Then blow away! (the whistle that is…)

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it is unconstitutional for workers who are involved in sexual harassment cases to be fired from their jobs for speaking out against their employers. You would think that this kind of protection would go without saying, and that the nation’s highest court wouldn’t even have to rule on this…

More importantly, the decision was unanimous, which illustrated the boneheadedness of the lower courts, which said that Vicky Crawford’s employer was OK to fire her. She agreed to be interviewed by Human Resources about witnessing some messed up stuff. Apparently, the district’s employee relations director Dr. Gene Hughes grabbed his crotch and said gross things to several female employees.

More details from the LA Times:

A decade ago, the Supreme Court said employers could shield themselves against sexual harassment suits by adopting strong policies against harassment in their work sites. The justices said employees should be given a way to make confidential complaints if they suffered abuse.

But that approach was undercut when the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Crawford’s claim. The court ruled that only employees who initiate discrimination complaints are protected from dismissal or demotion.

The Supreme Court called that a “freakish rule” Monday and rejected it. If allowed to stand, it would create a “Catch-22″ for employees where they could be asked to confirm bad behavior by a supervisor and be left vulnerable to firing for doing so, the justices said. Hughes, the target of the investigation in the Nashville schools, was not disciplined.

This has been an interesting week for women’s rights in the workplace. First Fair Pay starts heading through Congress, and now this.

Photo by riaskiff

OK, back in the saddle here in the real world. I’m actually still flying back to home base from my super long holiday with the family, but I saw a rundown on how to make your Mondays way better than I bet they are. My favorite of the 7 tips:

6. Smile and say hello to everyone (yes, even “them”) that you work with on the way into your desk/office/cube/work station. You’d be surprised at how much starting with a smile will make both their week and yours better!

Check out the full list at MetroMan.

Photo by FuzzCat

My mom quit her job on principle about 4 years ago. I was scared for her, since she was/is divorced, paying for my college tuition at the time, and she would have no health insurance, which isn’t good at any age, but she was around 50. She quit her job at a horrible conglomo that didn’t really care about their employees, to be a full-time author, and part-time professor for an MA creative writing program. While there isn’t a ton of cash coming through the house, and she has to pay out-of-pocket to go to the doctor (her current health plan is don’t get sick), she’s happy. I remember spending a lot of my childhood waiting for my mom to come home from work, many times after 10 p.m., sometimes later. She was miserable, and she worked hard for more than 20 years, but in the end, had little to show for it except for a lot of good friends.

We managed to pay for the rest of my tuition, and my mom spends her days writing, reading students’ work, and traveling to conferences and classrooms to talk about her novels (her first novel was published in 1987, before my little sister was even born!). She’s far less stressed, and even though she complains about some of her students, she’s clearly a lot happier than she was a couple of years ago.

Her situation makes me wonder how people are able to possibly quit their jobs on the basis of principle. Let’s say I walk in to work tomorrow and find out that my managers are not promoting me because I have a vagina… I’d like to say I would walk, right then and there, but financially, there is no way I could afford to quit. Wanna know how much I have in my savings account right now? It’s south of $10. I’m not lying. 401K? I have one, but with this whole financial crisis going on, it might help me retire for a day if it keeps accruing interest for the next 60 years without plummeting again, ever, if I’m lucky.

And I’m a journalist in Los Angeles… quitting means I might as well get my panhandling face ready...

But for others, I can’t imagine people just deciding to quit work in this economic climate. Even strippers are having a hard time making money…. When sex doesn’t sell, you know times are rough. So I’m want to know from you, if you were unhappy at work, or you found out something unethical was going down, would you quit? And would you be able to quit?

In an interview with early New York magazine staffer Gloria Steinem in the magazine’s 40th anniversary issue:

NY: What were office politics like when there were fewer women, Gloria?

GS: At New York Magazine, I felt it was my job to—they were nice guys, but it was my job to keep a good working relationship without going to bed with them or hurting their egos. The term sexual harassment didn’t exist yet. But it was fun because they were smart, good people. And they did change their attitudes. Jimmy Breslin in the beginning was skeptical about women freelancers. He said, “Ah, there’s too many girls here. It’s because we don’t pay enough.” But he gradually changed and became my friend, which meant he would call me up at three in the morning and say, “What’s doing? Come and meet me at the bar.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons