For decades, government jobs gave black workers a refuge from racial discrimination in the workplace and a springboard to the middle class. No longer.

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As Public Sector Sheds Jobs, Black Americans Are Hit Hard

This is the first of four columns by Karla Miller, winner of last month’s @Work Advice Contest .Tell us what you think and send your workplace questions to wpmagazine@washpost.com. A colleague and I have fallen in love after working closely together for about a year. We have a tremendous amount in common , and furthermore, he is one of the best human beings I have ever met. Unfortunately, our boss has forbidden us from dating because he feels it would be bad for office morale. (Dating colleagues isn’t against company policy, as long as there is no supervisory relationship between the parties.) One or both of us leaving the company would be possible but not easy — we work in a highly technical specialty, so there aren’t a lot of jobs. Read full article > >

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@Work Advice: When office romance is forbidden. Plus: My co-worker is giving me the stink-eye!

Wayne Schissler walked the four blocks from his workplace to the small Occupy Allentown protest to show the young demonstrators that a tea party member is not a monster. What he learned after a few hours of talk surprised him. “They didn’t stink, and they weren’t on drugs,” he said. “I could see me being them, 30 years ago.” Read full article > >

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For tea party and Occupy Wall Street movements, some common ground

The canvassing of nearly 100 homes and workplaces of donors that were listed on John C. Liu’s campaign finance reports has raised questions about the source and legitimacy of some donations.

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Irregularities Found in John Liu’s Campaign Finance Reports

Want to know how federal departments and large agencies fared in a broad survey of federal employees? Check out this table from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey . The Office of Personnel Management conducts an annual survey of the workforce to learn how federal employees feel about their workplaces. As we reported Friday, more than 266,000 workers participated this year. Read full article > >

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Employees have their say in workplace survey

The Obama White House is no place for a woman, at least according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind that's grabbing headlines this week. In addition to some supposedly vicious disputes between the president’s economic advisers, Suskind paints a picture of a male-dominated environment, hostile to the opinions of its female members. The book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, includes a quote from former White House communications director Anita Dunn: “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace. Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

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Is the White House Sexist?

Describe White House as a “hostile” workplace.

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Obama’s Female Advisers Felt Excluded

“The Hour,” a BBC America series starting on Wednesday, is a thriller that blends the Suez crisis in Britain with a more intimate look at sex, ambition and espionage in the workplace, around 1956.

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Television Review | ‘The Hour’: Espionage in the Government and Shenanigans at Work

Germany’s Knigge – or etiquette – Society calls for a ban on French-style kissing in the workplace, following complaints.

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German call to ban workplace kiss

Dear Carolyn: Last month I found out that my husband of four decades had an “emotional affair” for the past year. He is 60 and she is a 32-year-old at his workplace. After I questioned her frequent calls, he would always blow me off with one excuse or another. When our (grown) daughter questioned the appropriateness, he started deleting calls and text messages. I checked our bill and was shocked to discover hundreds of calls and text messages between them. I printed out several bills and confronted him. He stated that we’re-just-friends excuse that cheating husbands often use. I was so full of rage that I became obsessed with checking the times and dates of calls and texts. Sometimes the calls would last close to an hour. They would call each other as soon as I left the house for 20 minutes or when he was out walking the dog. This from a man who can barely stay on the phone with me (or his kids) for five minutes! He was always one to brag how he never cheated on his wife like so many other guys! Read full article > >

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Carolyn Hax: Can she get over her husband’s ‘emotional affair’?

The Obama administration has moved the focus on illegal immigration from workplace raids to indictments against people who hire unauthorized workers.

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A Crackdown on Employing Illegal Workers

Rules governing levels of compensation for workplace discrimination, and how long firms have to consult staff over job losses, are to be reviewed.

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Redundancy rules could be relaxed

It’s impossible to logically oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which protects orientation and gender-identity rights, without opposing the Civil Rights Act Does federal civil-rights law unduly infringe upon First Amendment freedoms of speech, association, and religion? The officially settled answer to that question (the only politic answer) is “no,” as Rand Paul discovered when he tactlessly revealed his opposition to regulating private-sector discrimination at the outset of his 2010 senate campaign. Within 24 hours he took it back, stressing his unqualified support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, citing its prohibition of the “abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws.” (Paul may have forgotten or maybe didn’t know that this seminal statute also prohibited sex discrimination in employment.) Of course, precisely because the Act barred race discrimination in public accommodations and the workplace, it was vehemently opposed by Southern Democrats, who mounted a two-month filibuster against it. Barry Goldwater also opposed it, out of the concern for individual freedom briefly espoused by Rand Paul. But toward the end of his life , in 1994, Goldwater was advocating for federal legislation prohibiting employment discrimination against gay people, who have “a constitutional right to be gay.” If religious freedom includes a right to discriminate against gay people, why, for example, doesn’t it include a right to discriminate against women? Goldwater would not be considered a conservative today (as he observed, he was eventually condemned as a liberal for supporting abortion rights), and relatively few Republicans would join him in supporting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Recently reintroduced in Congress, with a little bipartisan Senate support, ENDA has virtually no chance of passing the ultra-conservative Republican House. Today’s conservatives are selectively resurrecting libertarian arguments against civil-rights laws in their fight against the dreaded “homosexual agenda.”   Bans on racial, religious, and sexual discrimination, in general, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in particular, still require political obeisance, but bans on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity are condemned by the religious right as flagrant violations of religious freedom. ENDA “wages war on freedom of religion in the workplace,” Congressman Mike Pence declares . Right-wing advocacy groups agree: “ENDA is a dangerous, blatantly unconstitutional bill that would pit the government directly against the free exercise of religion,” according to Alliance Defense Fund President, Alan Sears. There are principled, moral, and pragmatic libertarian arguments for unregulated markets unhampered by civil-rights laws. The laws do infringe on freedom of association, and if you consider the associational rights of corporate employers equal to the associational rights essential to private groups and intimate relations (which I do not), then you agree with Rand Paul’s 2002 statement that “a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination.” That’s the moral argument against civil-rights laws. The pragmatic argument rests on the view that free markets are rational and discrimination irrational. Free markets are more effective than civil-rights laws in “promoting tolerance and reducing bigotry,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby asserts . But if this were true, then the 1964 Civil Rights Act would have been redundant. If this were true, then the end of segregation in public accommodations and decline of gross employment discrimination against women and minorities that followed passage of landmark civil-rights legislation would have been mere coincidence. Libertarian arguments against civil-rights laws are, in my view, unpersuasive and ahistorical, but they are not unprincipled. There are, however, no consistent, principled libertarian distinctions between “good” anti-discrimination laws that protect racial or religious minorities and women and “bad” laws that protect gay and transgendered people. If civil-rights laws unconstitutionally restrict individual freedom to discriminate, they restrict it regardless of the group they seek to protect. If religious freedom includes a right to discriminate against gay people, why, for example, doesn’t it include a right to discriminate against women? Why shouldn’t an employer who deems it sinful or a violation of some divine order for women to work outside the home or in traditionally male jobs have the same First Amendment right to discriminate as an employer who considers homosexuality a sin? If your answer is “religious beliefs that require women to stay home are wrong and held only by small minorities of employers while belief in the sinfulness of homosexuality is right,” then you’re the one advocating religious discrimination — insisting that laws should respect your beliefs or beliefs favored by the majority while disrespecting minority beliefs or beliefs you disdain. Religious opponents of ENDA are apt to attack it for extending “special rights,” but if there’s nothing special about protecting women and racial minorities from discrimination, then there’s nothing special about protecting gay people. Enacting ENDA would not extend any special equality rights to gay and transgendered people. Instead, religious opposition to its enactment demands special rights to discriminate against them. Image: mattymatt/flickr

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The Fallacy in the Religious, ‘Libertarian’ Argument Against ENDA

Months after a state law was passed with wage and workplace rules for caregivers and housekeepers, those who would benefit are still learning they have rights.

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A Boon for Nannies, if Only They Knew

Workplace dispute discussed in killing

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Lululemon suspect held without bond