The Supreme Court’s decision to end the country’s constitutional abortion protection has taken all types of companies into the most divisive corner of policy.
Some companies that fell silent last month – when Judge Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked to Politico – spoke for the first time on Friday, including The Walt Disney Company, which said it was compensating workers who had to leave the state to get an abortion.
Facebook’s senior Meta, American Express, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs also said they would cover staff travel expenses, while others, such as Apple, Starbucks, Lyft and Yelp, reiterated previous reports of similar measures. Patagonia, a manufacturer of outerwear, went so far as to post on LinkedIn on Friday that it offers “training and bail for those who protest peacefully against reproductive justice” and free time to vote.
But of the dozens of big companies that the Associated Press reached Friday, many did not respond, such as McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Tyson and Marriott. Walmart, based in Arkansas – the nation’s largest employer with a large share of stores in the states that will impose an abortion ban immediately after Friday’s Supreme Court ruling – was also silent.
At the same time, Business Roundtable, an organization representing the country’s most powerful companies, said it “has no opinion on the merits of the case”.
READ MORE: At the end of an abortion, the air in the Louisiana clinic is thick with mistrust and grief
There is a lot at stake for companies, many of which have publicly promised to promote equality and success for women in the workplace. In states with restrictive abortion laws, they may now face great challenges in attracting college-educated workers who can move around easily.
Luis von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo, sent a tweet on Friday to the Pennsylvania legislature, where the company ‘s headquarters are located: “If PA makes abortion illegal, we can’t attract talent, and we have to grow our offices elsewhere.
The decision to ban abortion and the forthcoming patch are also threatening a technology boom in places like Austin, Texas, as companies like Dell – which were already becoming more flexible to telecommuting due to a tight labor market – are struggling to recruit newly minted graduates. business centers, said Steven Pedigo, a professor of economic development at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Are you going to New York or Seattle or the Bay Area instead of Austin? I think this is a real opportunity, ”said Pedigo. “It’s getting a lot trickier, especially when you look at the young, progressive workforce that technology workers tend to be.”
Emily M. Dickens, chief of staff and head of government of the Society for Human Resource Management, said in a statement that nearly a quarter of organizations in a recent poll agreed to offer a health care account to cover travel for reproductive care in another country. the state increases their ability to compete for talent.
“However, how these policies interact with national laws is unclear and employers should be aware of the legal risks involved,” he said.
Dickens noted that companies that use a third-party administrator to process claims on their own behalf – usually large employers – are subject to employee pension insurance law rather than state law. However, companies that have to buy their own health insurance for their employees – usually small businesses – are subject to national regulations and have less flexibility in setting benefits.
READ MORE: Missouri’s latest abortion clinic is in the middle of Roe’s rainfall
Offering travel coverage can also make companies a target for anti-abortion regulators. In March, a representative of the state of Texas sent a letter to Republican Briscoe Cain Citigroup announcing that he would propose legislation that would ban parts of the state from doing business with any company that offers travel benefits to workers seeking abortion.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh said in a dissenting opinion issued on Friday that it would be unconstitutional for a state to ban residents from traveling to another state for an abortion.
“I think the answer is no, based on the constitutional right to travel internationally,” Kavanaugh wrote.
However, the company’s right to finance what would be an illegal act in another state is still in question, St. Teresa Collett, Professor of Law at Thomas University.
“This is not in itself a matter of transnational trade,” he said. “So you need the right plaintiff.”
At the same time, technology companies are faced with the difficult questions they face when some of their millions of customers in the United States are charged with abortion. Services such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft regularly transmit digital data that law enforcement agencies search for. This has raised concerns among privacy advocates regarding abortion law enforcement who use period applications, phone location data, and other sensitive online health information.
Four Congressional Democrats on Friday called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google and Apple’s telephone tracking practices, warning that location identifiers used in advertisements could fall into the hands of prosecutors or bounty hunters seeking to “hunt or request women who have had an abortion.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes at a time when companies are becoming increasingly dependent on women for their jobs and especially because they have a nationwide labor shortage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women now make up nearly 50% of the U.S. workforce, up from 37.5% in 1970, three years before the Supreme Court ruled that abortions were Roe vs. In the Wade case.
Denying access to abortion can hit low-income workers the hardest, as they tend to work in vulnerable jobs that are also demanding, from loading food to store shelves to working as a healthcare professional.
“As a direct result of this decision, more women are being forced to choose between paying rent or traveling long distances to get safe abortion care,” said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 2 million people. stewards, health workers, and teachers in the United States “Working women are already struggling in paid jobs without unpaid leave, and many also have the responsibility of caring for their families, usually unpaid.”
Sara Nelson, president of the Stewardess Association, told the Associated Press that the decision was “devastating.”
“This is at the heart of all our union’s 75 years of work,” he said. “This decision is not about whether anyone supports abortion or not. It is a distraction… It is about whether or not we respect women’s rights to determine their future.
Maurice Schweitzer, a professor at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, said a handful of companies have taken a stand on the lawsuit because their clients and employees are waiting to speak.
“We are currently in a situation where we expect business leaders to be leaders in the political sphere as well,” he said. “Many employees expect to work in companies that not only pay them well, but whose values are in line with those values.”
But most leaders are likely to avoid this difficult topic and focus on things like inflation or supply chain disruptions, he said.
There are also risks involved.
“They may support travel for out-of-state care and risk litigation and the anger of local politicians, or they may not cover this coverage and risk the anger of employees,” Schweitzer said.
What are the 3 major areas of ethics?
___AP Business Writers Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island; Dee-Ann Durbin of Detroit; Barbara Ortutay San Francisco; David Koenig in Dallas and Ken Sweet in New York contributed to the story.
- There are four main principles of ethics: autonomy, goodwill, justice and non-crime. Read also : Dobbs rule is an attack on women’s health, a healthy health culture. Every patient has the right to make their own decisions based on their beliefs and values. [4].
- There are three broad areas in ethical research:
- Metaethics that focus on the meaning of ethical terms themselves (such as “what is goodness?”) …
Normative ethics, on the other hand, is the study of ethical actions. …
What are some ethical issues in the world today?
Applied ethics related to how people can achieve moral results in specific situations.
What are the three main branches of ethics? These three branches are metaethics, normative ethics (sometimes referred to as ethical theory) and applied ethics. On the same subject : The United States needs people to stand up for abortion.
What is the most ethical issue?
Some of the most common ethical issues facing organizations around the world are outsourcing, labor standards and conditions, diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace, child labor, trust and integrity, oversight, human rights, religion, the political arena, the environment, bribery and corruption. To see also : Women in Business: Amy Wenger. .
What are the 10 ethical issues? The main 10 ethical issues that participants perceived in order of importance were: (1) patients’ rights, (2) equality of resources, (3) patient confidentiality, (4) patient safety, (5) conflict of interest, (6) privatization ethics, (7) informed consent, (8) intercourse, (9) …
What are the three 3 types of ethical issues?
1. Harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Harassment and discrimination are arguably the biggest ethical issues currently affecting business owners.
What are the four ethical issues?
What is an example of an ethical issue? Some examples of the ethical dilemma are: taking credit for the work of others. To offer the customer a worse product for their own profit. Use internal knowledge to your advantage.
There are generally three philosophical approaches to ethical reasoning, or what can be considered science: utilitarian ethics. deontological ethics. the ethics of virtue.
