Searching for Winners

A 14-year-long fight to win benefits for women discriminated against in unemployment compensation ends in victory this month. But, unless state officials redouble their efforts to find winners, only about one eligible woman in four will benefit from the triumph.

The case began in 1971, when Betty Ann Boren, a waitress, was asked to work the 5 a.m. shift at a restaurant in Delano. Boren, then 36, couldn’t find a baby sitter for her youngest daughter, and was laid off. Boren then was denied unemployment insurance because the law disqualified anyone who was not the main breadwinner in a family and who left a job for marital or domestic reasons.

Boren sued, arguing that while the language of the law appeared neutral, it discriminated against women. She won her case on appeal in 1976; the Legislature repealed that part of the law, and in 1981 the California Supreme Court qualified the case as a class-action suit.

The state and Boren’s attorneys agreed that 115,000 women are eligible to share potential awards of $26 million from insurance funds, and began searching for them. The state Franchise Tax Board mailed notices where it had addresses. There have been legal notices, radio ads and signs in post offices. There is even a special toll-free phone number within California: 800-831-3583. But so far only 26,000 women have responded. Only women denied unemployment benefits between Aug. 22, 1968, and Dec. 31, 1976, are eligible.

State officials who are working with the case on a day-to-day basis have been thoroughly cooperative. But three months--summer months, at that--are a short time in which to find people who were jobbed out of as much as $800 as long ago as 17 years.

To be even fairer than it has been, the state should consider extending the deadline. Gov. George Deukmejian could help by going on television to ask women who think that they may have lost unemployment insurance to come forward and find out. Such an effort would dramatize the fact that the law has changed, and would help make the law work as it should for the benefit of those who have been wronged.