In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was
working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping
container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her
that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was
not an isolated case.)
Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her
employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be
heard in private arbitration.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense
Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from
companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking
workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."
Speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, Franken said:
The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law ... And
today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts to deny
women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. ... The victims of rape and
discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the
constitutional power to make that happen.
Easy call, right? Well, not if you're a Republican, eager to protect a right of
corporations to rape its employees.
Of the 40 Republicans in the Senate, only 10 voted for the Franken amendment,
including all four women in the Senate GOP.
Of the six Republican males who voted for the amendment, all of them
represented states outside the deep South -- Bennett (UT), Hatch (UT), Grassley
(IA), LeMieux (FL), Lugar (IN), and Voinovich (OH).
The other 30 men, including luminaries like David Vitter, John Ensign, and John
McCain, didn't think the amendment warranted passage.
This is interesting. According to Republicans, a fake pimp and ho, reported to
the police, was apparently so beyond the pale that they've worked to strip
ACORN of all federal funding. But denying employees actual redress from gang
rapes is no big deal?
Will the GOP soon introduce a new Constitution Amendment that reads, "Congress
shall make no law respecting the ability of corporations to gang rape their
employees"? Is support for corporate gang rape already in the GOP platform, or
does it need to be added at their next meeting? Is there a huge corporate gang
rape lobby that is funneling millions into GOP pockets, or did they vote this
way out of personal conviction?
As predictably regressive as the modern GOP has become, it's shocking to see
that they still have the ability to shock.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/7/790633/-GOP-backs-corporate-rape
