CA Ethical Reasoning In Business Articles Discussion

Read these articles.  They are about three highly publicized incidents where actions by employees forced each company to take a drastic and unusual action.  As you read, think about the ethics of what is happening.  Then answer the questions.

1.  Do you think Dr. Gokal was acting ethically in the way he administered the vaccine?  Why?

2. Should the doctors disclose this event to anyone and, if so, to whom? Why?

3. Read the articles on Women’s Soccer.  Who do you see exhibited unethical behavior?  Explain?

4.  Think about the Approaches to Ethical Reasoning, such as Duty-Based Ethics, Outcome Based Ethics etc. .  Which approach did Judge Bynum use in regards to the vaccine situation?  Which approach should have be used in the case of Wells Fargo in the face of multiple violations?  Explain?

1/30/23, 2:53 PM
From Equal Pay to Ending Abuse, Soccer’s Fight for Fairness Spreads – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/sports/soccer/uswnt-equal-pay.html
U.S. Players Won Their Equal Pay Fight. Their Rivals Took Notes.
The success of the U.S. women’s soccer team on the field and at the negotiating table has been a model for players elsewhere.
In other countries, those battles are heating up.
By Ella Braidwood
Oct. 10, 2022
LONDON — There is always something to shoulder, the world’s best women’s soccer players know. Second-class facilities.
Failed leadership. The persistent fight for equal opportunities. The glacial battle for equal pay.
Just last week, a comprehensive report revealing systemic abuse across American women’s soccer left players devastated,
but not surprised.
“It’s really sad to say, but in a way, I think we’re used to having to deal with one thing or another,” United States forward
Megan Rapinoe said of the report’s findings before her team played England on Friday. “It seems to bring us closer.”
It is that sense of collective struggle that has repeatedly galvanized the United States women’s team in its battles with U.S.
Soccer. It’s also what has made them leaders to colleagues and rivals around the world, players and teams with their own
struggles, their own priorities, their own goals on and off the field.
England’s players, for example, said this week that they would use their next match to raise awareness of a campaign for
girls to have equal access to soccer at school. In Spain, the team that will take the field against the United States on Tuesday
will be without 15 key players who have been exiled for demanding that their federation engage with concerns about the
team’s coach.
And in Canada, the women’s team — the biggest regional rival to the U.S. and a leading contender to win next summer’s
Women’s World Cup — has drawn a line in the sand with its federation, saying it will not accept any new contract that does
not guarantee equal pay between men and women.
“A lot of it has to do with respect and being seen and valued for what we’re providing to our federations,” the United States
captain Becky Sauerbrunn said in a recent interview about her team’s equal pay campaign. “We’re doing the same work that
the men are doing. We’re playing on the same pitch. We’re traveling and training and playing games, usually the same
amount, if not more. Why would they get paid more than us?”
In Washington last month, Sauerbrunn sat at a table alongside several teammates after a match and signed the equal pay
deal. It was, for her, a moment worth savoring.
“What’s so frustrating for us sometimes,” she said of that moment of triumph and celebration, “is that we feel like this should
have been given so long ago.”
It is an issue that a growing number of federations are continuing to work to address, either through proactive agreements
or after pressure from their players. Since 2017, when Norway’s federation became the first to announce an equal pay
agreement between its national teams, a host of nations have followed suit, including federations in New Zealand, Brazil,
Australia, England, Ireland and — just this summer — Spain and the Netherlands.
Still, nearly all of those deals shade the definition of equal pay by offering men’s and women’s players equal match bonuses
but only equivalent percentages of the vastly different prize money on offer from FIFA at competitions like the World Cup.
The prize pool for the men’s tournament in Qatar next month will be $440 million — multiples more than what will be
available to women at their next championship.
The new U.S. Soccer agreement is different: The American teams will be paid the same, dollar for dollar, for competing for
their country because they have agreed to pool their World Cup prize money. Over the lifetime of the deal, that is expected to
shift millions of dollars that would have gone to the men in previous years to the members of the women’s team.
Players in other nations still have far to go. But they have been taking notes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/sports/soccer/uswnt-equal-pay.html
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1/30/23, 2:53 PM
From Equal Pay to Ending Abuse, Soccer’s Fight for Fairness Spreads – The New York Times
In June, the Canadian women rebelled against their federation — just over a year before the next World Cup — over the
cause of equal pay. “The women’s national team does not view equal FIFA percentages as between our respective teams as
equal pay,” said its players in an open letter in which the team indicated its ambition to follow in the footsteps of the U.S.
women’s team.
The team, the Canadian players said, “will not accept an agreement that does not guarantee equal pay.”
That spirit of equal reward, and equal opportunity, is spreading.
“The younger generation now will believe that they all should be having the same opportunities, and they all should be
having the same chances,” said Vivianne Miedema, the Arsenal and Netherlands star, who worked with her federation and
alongside her Dutch teammates to achieve their equal pay deal.
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“It’s not just a money thing,” Miedema added. “It’s a movement that’s been created. I just don’t really think women and men
should be treated in a different way.”
In Spain, a dispute involving a group of 15 national team players is about more day-to-day concerns. They have refused to
play for their country until their federation addresses the methods and management of their coach, Jorge Vilda, whom some
members of the team want removed.
The Spanish federation responded by not only refusing to engage with the complaints but also exiling the 15 players who
went public with their demands. Instead, the federation will field an understrength squad in Tuesday’s high-profile friendly
against the United States, one of Spain’s most important opportunities to test itself against a World Cup rival before the
tournament next summer.
“If 15 of the best players in the world wanted to share feedback I’d respect them enough as people and players to take their
concerns seriously,” Sauerbrunn wrote on Twitter.
The Spain team that will face the United States on Tuesday will have a different look after
more than a dozen players were dropped after raising concerns about the coach, Jorge
Vilda, at top. Juanjo Martin/EPA, via Shutterstock
Rapinoe echoed that sense of solidarity, saying, “It’s uncomfortable to know the just general level of disrespect for women’s
teams and women’s players around the world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/sports/soccer/uswnt-equal-pay.html
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1/30/23, 2:53 PM
From Equal Pay to Ending Abuse, Soccer’s Fight for Fairness Spreads – The New York Times
That is why, for Miedema and other top players, the fight isn’t only about pay. Resources are just as important, from the
fields teams play on to equal access to equipment and medical personnel to the quality of coaching.
“One of the most important things that we’ve been continuously fighting for over the last couple of years is that we’ve got the
same facilities, we’ve got the same opportunities, starting at a young age,” Miedema said. “Because that’s how the level of
women’s soccer will increase.”
But alongside progress in the women’s game — record attendances, unprecedented television ratings, record salaries and
rising transfer fees — the scathing inequalities players continue to face were being laid bare. The abuse scandal,
documented in excruciating detail in a report by the former Justice Department official Sally Q. Yates last week, was just the
latest example.
Miedema, in an interview before the Yates report was published, suggested oversight was just as important as pay and other
working conditions. But the issue of the huge gap in prize money was too big, and too widespread, she said, to be left to
individual federations to resolve.
“I think that’s something that needs to be led by FIFA and UEFA,” she said, a reference to European soccer’s governing
body.
Lise Klaveness, the president of Norway’s soccer federation, has committed her federation to that kind of top-down equality.
But she also has urged UEFA and FIFA to make a similar commitment.
“Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and in Norway,” said Klaveness, a former national team player. “We’re everywhere,
in every schoolyard, everywhere. So, it’s very important for us to look at ourselves as something that meets all girls and all
boys, and that you should feel the same value.”
Sauerbrunn’s advice to other teams, including the Spanish side she and her teammates will face on Tuesday? Keep fighting.
Keep asking. Keep trying.
“When you’re negotiating, sometimes you’re going to have to be creative, you’re going to have to persevere because you’re
going to hear ‘no’ a lot,” she said. “We had to keep making ground slowly.
“But you’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t ask. And I would definitely say that the collective voice is so much
stronger than just a few individuals.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/sports/soccer/uswnt-equal-pay.html
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The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened on this
late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious
medicine expired. In six hours.
Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his home outside Houston. Some
were acquaintances; others, strangers. A bed-bound nonagenarian. A woman in her 80s with
dementia. A mother with a child who uses a ventilator.
After midnight, and with just minutes before the vaccine became unusable, the doctor, Hasan
Gokal, gave the last dose to his wife, who has a pulmonary disease that leaves her short of
breath.
For his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10
vaccine doses worth a total of $135 — a shun-worthy misdemeanor that sent his name and mug
shot rocketing around the globe.
“It was my world coming down,” Dr. Gokal said in a telephone interview on Friday. “To have
everything collapse on you. God, it was the lowest moment in my life.”
The matter of Dr. Gokal is playing out as pandemic-weary Americans scour websites and cross
state lines chasing rumors, all in anxious pursuit of a medicine in short supply. The case opens
wide to interpretation, becoming a study in the learn-as-you-go bioethics of the country’s
stumbling vaccine rollout.
Late last month, a judge dismissed the charge as groundless, after which the local district
attorney vowed to present the matter to a grand jury. And while prosecutors portray the doctor as
a cold opportunist, his lawyer says he acted responsibly — even heroically.
“Everybody was looking at this guy and saying, ‘I got my mother waiting for a vaccine, my
grandfather waiting for a vaccine,’” the lawyer, Paul Doyle, said. “They were thinking, ‘This guy
is a villain.’”
Dr. Gokal, 48, immigrated from Pakistan as a boy and earned a medical degree at SUNY Upstate
Medical University in Syracuse. After working at hospitals in Central New York, he moved to
Texas in 2009 to oversee the emergency department at a suburban Houston hospital. His
volunteer work has included rebuilding homes and providing medical care after Hurricane
Harvey in 2017.
In recent years, Dr. Gokal split his time between two area hospitals. But when the pandemic hit
in early 2020, he lived for a month in a hotel and an apartment rather than risk infecting his wife,
Maria, 47, who has pulmonary sarcoidosis, a disease in her lungs that leaves her winded after
even minimal activity.
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“I was petrified to go home and bring Covid to my wife,” he said.
Fortunately, he said, the Harris County Public Health department recruited him in April to
become the medical director for its Covid-response team. The job paid less, but he was eager to
protect his wife by limiting his exposure to the coronavirus in emergency rooms.
On Dec. 22, Dr. Gokal joined a conference call in which state health officials explained the
protocols for administering the recently approved Moderna vaccine. The 10 or 11 doses in a vial
are viable for six hours after the seal is punctured.
Dr. Gokal said the advice was to vaccinate people eligible under the 1(a) category (health care
workers and residents in long-term-care facilities), then those under the 1(b) category (people
over 65 or with a health condition that increases risk of severe Covid-related illness).
After that, he said, the message was: “Just put it in people’s arms. We don’t want any doses to go
to waste. Period.”
On Dec. 29, a mild Tuesday, Dr. Gokal arrived before dawn at a park in the Houston suburb of
Humble to supervise a vaccination event intended mostly for emergency workers. In part because
of minimal publicity, the pace was slow, with no more than 250 doses administered. But this was
the county’s first public event, he said. “We knew there would be hiccups.”
Around 6:45 at night, as the event wound down, an eligible person arrived for a shot. A nurse
punctured a new vial to administer the vaccine, which activated the six-hour time limit for the 10
remaining doses.
The chances of 10 eligible people suddenly showing up were slim; by now, workers were
offsetting the darkness with car headlights. But Dr. Gokal said he was determined not to waste a
single dose.
He said he first asked the event’s 20 or so workers, who either refused or had already been
vaccinated. The paramedics on site had left, and of the two police officers, one had been
vaccinated and the other declined the doctor’s offer.
Dr. Gokal said he called a Harris County public health official in charge of operations to report
his plans to find 10 people to receive the remaining doses. He said he was told, simply: OK.
He said he then called another high-ranking colleague whose parents and in-laws were eligible
for the vaccine. They weren’t available.
The hours were counting down.
The doctor figured that if he returned the open vial to his department’s almost certainly empty
office at this late hour, it would go to waste. So as he started the drive to his home in a
neighboring county, he said, he called people in his cellphone’s contact list to ask whether they
had older relatives or neighbors needing to be immunized.
“No one I was really intimately familiar with,” Dr. Gokal said. “I wasn’t that close to anyone.”
When he reached his home in Sugar Land, waiting outside were a woman in her mid-60s with
cardiac issues, and a woman in her early 70s with assorted health problems. He inoculated both.
Eight doses to go.
The doctor got back in his car — his wife insisted on going with him — and drove to a Sugar
Land house with four eligible people: a man in his late 60s with health issues; the man’s bedbound mother, in her 90s; his mother-in-law, in her mid-80s and with severe dementia; and his
wife, her mother’s caregiver.
He then drove to the home of a housebound woman in her late 70s and administered the vaccine.
“I didn’t know her at all,” he said.
Three doses remained, but three people had agreed to meet the doctor at his home. Two were
already waiting: a distant acquaintance in her mid-50s who works at a health clinic’s front desk,
and a 40-ish woman he had never met whose child relies on a ventilator.
As midnight approached, Dr. Gokal said, the third would-be recipient called to say that he
wouldn’t be coming: too late.
Tired and frustrated, Dr. Gokal said that he turned to his wife, whose pulmonary sarcoidosis
made her eligible for the vaccine. “I didn’t intend to give this to you, but in a half-hour I’m going
to have to dump this down the toilet,” he recalled telling her. “It’s as simple as that.”
He said his hesitant wife asked whether it was the right thing to do. “It makes perfect sense,” he
said he answered. “We don’t want any doses wasted, period.”
With 15 minutes to spare, Dr. Gokal gave his wife the last Moderna dose.
The next morning, he said, he submitted the paperwork for the 10 people he had vaccinated the
previous night, including his wife. He said he also informed his supervisor and colleagues of
what he had done, and why.
Several days later, the doctor said, that supervisor and the human resources director summoned
him to ask whether he had administered 10 doses outside of the scheduled event on Dec. 29. He
said he had, in keeping with guidelines not to waste the vaccine — and was promptly fired.
The officials maintained that he had violated protocol and should have returned the remaining
doses to the office or thrown them away, the doctor recalled. He also said that one of the officials
startled him by questioning the lack of “equity” among those he had vaccinated.
“Are you suggesting that there were too many Indian names in that group?” Dr. Gokal said he
asked.
Exactly, he said he was told.
Elizabeth Perez, the director of communications for Harris County Public Health, said the
department was unable to comment on its protocols, the Dec. 29 vaccination event or the Gokal
case.
On Jan. 21, about two weeks after the doctor’s termination, a friend called to say that a local
reporter had just tweeted about him. At that very moment, one of his three children answered the
door to bright lights and a thrust microphone. Shaken, the 16-year-old boy closed the door and
said, “Dad, there are people out there with cameras.”
This was how Dr. Gokal learned that he had been charged with stealing vaccine doses.
Harris County’s district attorney, Kim Ogg, had just issued a news release that afternoon with the
headline: “Fired Harris County Health Doctor Charged With Stealing Vial Of Covid-19
Vaccine.”
Image
Kim Ogg, the Harris County district attorney, whose case against Dr. Gokal was dismissed by a
judge.Credit…Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press
It alleged that Dr. Gokal “stole the vial” and disregarded county protocols to ensure that vaccines
are not wasted and are administered to eligible people on a waiting list. “He abused his position
to place his friends and family in line in front of people who had gone through the lawful process
to be there,” Ms. Ogg said.
But Dr. Gokal said that no one from the district attorney’s office had ever contacted him to hear
his version of events. And when his lawyer requested copies of the written protocols and waiting
list referred to in the complaint, a prosecutor told him by email that there were no written
protocols from late December; nor had a written wait list yet been found.
Harris County had received the vaccine faster than anticipated, the email said, and public health
officials “immediately jumped from testing to vaccinating.”
As news of his alleged crime spread, Dr. Gokal heard from relatives and friends in Singapore,
the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. “Many were calling me for support, telling me, ‘We
know you better than that,’” he said. “But there were a lot of people who didn’t call.”
Days later, a criminal court judge, Franklin Bynum, dismissed the case for lack of probable
cause.
Franklin Bynum, a criminal court judge, rebuked the district attorney’s office for filing charges
against the doctor.Credit…Todd Spoth for The New York Times
“In the number of words usually taken to describe an allegation of retail shoplifting, the State
attempts, for the first time, to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses
during a public health emergency,” he wrote. “The Court emphatically rejects this attempted
imposition of the criminal law on the professional decisions of a physician.”
Both the Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society recently issued a
statement of support for physicians like Dr. Gokal who find themselves scrambling “to avoid
wasting the vaccine in a punctured vial.”
“It is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this
situation with a criminal offense,” the statement said.
Dane Schiller, the district attorney’s director of communications, declined to answer questions
about the case. He said in an email that when the matter is presented to a grand jury,
“representatives of the community can vote on whether an indictment is warranted.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Gokal said, he continues to pay a price for not wasting a vaccine in a pandemic.
His voice broke as he counted the toll.
He lost his job. His wife struggles to sleep. His children are worried. And hospitals have told him
not to come back until his case is resolved.
He spends his time volunteering at a nonprofit health clinic for the uninsured, haunted all the
while by the realization that no matter what, it will still be out there: the story about that
Pakistani doctor in Houston who stole all those vaccines.
“How can I take it back?” that doctor asked.
2/5/23, 4:08 PM
U.S. Women’s Players and U.S. Soccer Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
U.S. Soccer and Women’s Players Agree to Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit
Under the terms of the agreement, the athletes will receive $24 million and a pledge from the soccer federation to equalize pay for the men’s
and women’s national teams.
By Andrew Das
Andrew Das has reported on soccer’s equal pay dispute since 2016.
Published Feb. 22, 2022
Updated May 18, 2022
Update: U.S. Soccer and top players agree to guarantee equal pay. Read the latest.
For six years, the members of the World Cup-winning United States women’s soccer team and their bosses argued about equitable
treatment of female players. They argued about whether they deserved the same charter flights as their male counterparts and about the
definition of what constituted equal pay.
But the long fight that set key members of the women’s team against their bosses at U.S. Soccer ended on Tuesday just as abruptly as it
had begun, with a settlement that included a multimillion-dollar payment to the players and a promise by their federation to equalize pay
between the men’s and women’s national teams.
Under the terms of the agreement, the women — a group of several dozen current and former players that includes some of the world’s
most popular and decorated athletes — will share $24 million in payments from U.S. Soccer. The bulk of that figure is back pay, a tacit
admission that compensation for the men’s and women’s teams had been unequal for years.
Perhaps more notable is U.S. Soccer’s pledge to equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national teams in all competitions, including
the World Cup, in the teams’ next collective bargaining agreements. That gap was once seen as an unbridgeable divide preventing any sort
of equal pay settlement. If it is closed by the federation in negotiations with both teams, the change could funnel millions of dollars to a new
generation of women’s national team players.
“It wasn’t an easy process to get to this point for sure,” Cindy Parlow Cone, U.S. Soccer’s president, said in a telephone interview. “The
most important thing here is that we are moving forward, and we are moving forward together.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
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2/5/23, 4:08 PM
U.S. Women’s Players and U.S. Soccer Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit – The New York Times
Alex Morgan in 2021. She was one of the original signers of a wage discrimination complaint against U.S. Soccer. Trevor Ruszkowski/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
The players’ long battle with U.S. Soccer, which is not only their employer but also the sport’s national governing body, had thrust them to
the forefront of a broader fight for equality in women’s sports and drawn the support of fellow athletes, celebrities, politicians and
presidential candidates. In recent years, players, teams and even athletes in other sports — ice hockey Olympic gold medalists, Canadian
soccer pros and W.N.B.A. players — had reached out to the American soccer players and their union for help as they sought better pay and
working conditions.
Many of those players and teams won major gains — Norway, Australia and the Netherlands are among the countries whose soccer
federations have committed to closing the pay gap between men and women — even as the American players’ case dragged on.
“I think it was just extremely motivating to see organizations and employers admit their wrongdoing, and us forcing their hand in making
it right,” said Alex Morgan, a striker and former co-captain of the women’s national team. “The domino effect that we helped kick-start — I
think we’re really proud of it.”
For U.S. Soccer, the settlement is an expensive end to a conflict that had battered its reputation, damaged its ties with sponsors and soured
its relationship with some of its most popular stars, including Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Carli Lloyd, who retired last year. U.S. Soccer
was under no obligation to settle with the women’s team; a federal judge in 2020 had dismissed the players’ equal pay arguments,
stripping them of nearly all of their legal leverage, and the players’ appeal was not certain to succeed.
Yet for that reason, the settlement represents an unexpected victory for the players: Nearly two years after losing in court, they were able
to extract not only an eight-figure settlement but also a commitment from the federation to enact the very reforms the judge had rejected.
“What we set out to do,” Morgan said in a telephone interview, “was to have acknowledgment of discrimination from U.S. Soccer, and we
received that through back pay in the settlement. We set out to have fair and equal treatment in working conditions, and we got that
through the working conditions settlement. And we set out to have equal pay moving forward for us and the men’s team through U.S.
Soccer, and we achieved that.”
When finalized, the settlement will resolve all remaining claims in the gender discrimination lawsuit the players filed in 2019. But it came
with one crucial condition: It is contingent on the ratification of a new contract between U.S. Soccer and the players’ union for the women’s
team. And that process could take weeks, or even months.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
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2/5/23, 4:08 PM
U.S. Women’s Players and U.S. Soccer Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit – The New York Times
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stories and analysis delivered to your inbox every week. Get it sent to
your inbox.
The men’s and women’s teams have already held joint negotiating sessions with U.S. Soccer, but to make the deal work — the federation is
seeking a single collective bargaining agreement that covers both teams — the men’s players will have to agree to share, or surrender,
millions of dollars in potential World Cup payments from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body. Those payments, set by FIFA and
exponentially larger for the men’s World Cup than the corresponding women’s tournament, are at the heart of the equal pay divide.
Cone, a former member of the women’s team, said in September that the federation would not sign new collective bargaining agreements
with either team that did not equalize World Cup prize money, a position she and the federation cemented in Tuesday’s agreement. The
men’s union, whose lawyers have been sitting in on some of the women’s negotiating sessions, made no public statements on Tuesday.
The players association for the women’s team congratulated its members and their lawyers “on their historic success in fighting decades of
discrimination perpetuated by the U.S. Soccer Federation,” but made clear that it planned to hold U.S. Soccer — and by extension the men’s
team — to previous public promises to support equal pay.
“Moving forward and tying this settlement with the C.B.A. is important for both groups,” Cone said. “Because we all believe in equal pay,
and the only way we can get there — until FIFA equalizes the World Cup prize money — is for the men’s team, the women’s team and U.S.
Soccer to get together and reach an agreement on equalizing it ourselves.”
The United States women’s soccer team has won the last two World Cups. Alex Grimm/Getty Images
The equal pay fight began almost six years ago, when five star players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination. The players — Morgan, Rapinoe, Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo —
said they were being shortchanged on bonuses, appearance fees and even meal money while they were in training camps, and contended
they earned as little as 40 percent of what players on the men’s national team were paid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
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2/5/23, 4:08 PM
U.S. Women’s Players and U.S. Soccer Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit – The New York Times
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Solo said, though U.S. Soccer immediately disputed them. Men’s players, Solo said, “get paid more to
just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”
Almost immediately, soccer fans took sides in the fight, cleaving American soccer. The federation briefly argued that the men brought in
more money and drew higher television ratings, and thus deserved higher pay, but soon abandoned the stance amid public backlash,
player fury and a closer reading of equal pay law. The women leveraged their popularity and their social media followings to batter the
federation in the court of public opinion.
Depositions as the legal case moved forward produced uncomfortable exchanges that the public relations-savvy players weaponized as
slogans they sold on T-shirts.
In April 2020, the judge in the women’s gender discrimination lawsuit, R. Gary Klausner of the United States District Court for the Central
District of California, appeared to resolve the case in a single devastating ruling. Dismissing the argument that they were systematically
underpaid, Klausner ruled that U.S. Soccer had substantiated its claim that the women’s team had actually earned more “on both a
cumulative and an average per-game basis” than the men’s team during the years covered by the lawsuit.
The players vowed to appeal their defeat, but all seemed lost. A deal over working conditions in December signaled compromise was still
possible, and cleared the way for the players’ appeal to move forward. But behind the scenes the sides were already making progress
toward a settlement.
With Cone working with leaders of the women’s team like Sauerbrunn, the captain and players association president — “We’ve had a lot of
really constructive conversations back and forth,” Cone said — the federation’s leaders and the players hammered out a deal everyone
could support.
In television appearances and interviews and a joint conference call with reporters on Tuesday night, the sides hailed it as a “monumental
win” and a “major step forward.”
But not all the players were there to celebrate, though. The World Cup veteran Crystal Dunn, a players association vice president, had to
demur; A negotiating session on the new collective bargaining agreement had been scheduled for the same time as the conference call,
and someone had to be at the talks to represent the team in the next stage of its fight.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/sports/soccer/us-womens-soccer-equal-pay.html
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Wells Fargo Accused In a New Fake
Accounts Scandal
https://www.thestreet.com/banking/wells-fargo-has-a-new-fake-account-scandal-and-a-1-8billion-headache
The beleaguered financial institution faces new allegations that impact people who aren’t
customers of the bank this time.
•
DANIEL KLINE
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UPDATED:
AUG 5, 2023 7:46 PM EDT
ORIGINAL:
AUG 4, 2023
Wells Fargo admitted to having employees create millions of fake accounts for
its customers between 2002 and 2016. The company pushed its employees
into doing that by creating unrealistic sales goals, which it admitted to when it
settled with the U.S. government in 2022.
To settle the matter the bank paid a $3 billion fine.
“Our settlement with Wells Fargo, and the $3 billion monetary penalty
imposed on the bank, go far beyond ‘the cost of doing business,’” Andrew
Murray, the U.S. Attorney for the western district of North Carolina, had said.
“They are appropriate given the staggering size, scope, and duration of Wells
Fargo’s illicit conduct, which spanned well over a decade,”
[?]
It was one of the biggest banking scandals of all time, and you would think
that it was something that would never happen at the bank again.
Now, however, an NBC News investigation shows that people have been
discovering mysterious new Wells Fargo (WFC) – Get Free Report accounts
that they never actually opened.
Wells Fargo has faced a number of scandals.
Image source: Shutterstock/TheStreet
Wells Fargo Faces New Allegations
The new NBC report alleges that a number of people have reported
discovering new Wells Fargo accounts in their name that they did not open.
One of those people with an account in his name that he did not open, Jay
Patterson, works as a forensic accountant helping consumer lawyers
investigate big banks.
“Other consumers, in public complaints to regulators, have detailed similarly
mysterious Wells Fargo bank accounts, raising fresh questions, experts say,
about compliance and risk management at a bank that has been rocked by
scandals in recent years,” NBC reported.
The difference between these new fake accounts and the previous scandal is
that these are accounts created for people who are not Wells Fargo
customers. In the previous scandal, the company’s employees were adding
new accounts for existing customers.
NBC called this “synthetic identity fraud — when impostors create new
identities using a combination of real and fake personal information, such as
names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and driver’s license numbers.”
That’s a tactic used to launder money, finance terrorism or defraud financial
institutions, government agencies, or individuals, according to the story.
When Patterson’s fake account was created, some of his personal information
was correct, but some of it wasn’t. This raises questions as to whether the
bank is properly vetting new accounts.
Wells Fargo Faces a $1.8 Billion Bill
Wells Fargo also said in an Aug. 1 Securities and Exchange Commission filing
that it expected to pay $1.8 billion as part of a special-assessment fee
proposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The federal agency is
looking to recoup the $15.8 billion it spent during the March failures of
Signature and Silicon Valley Bank.
The FDIC has not finalized the payment plan, but it’s expected to allow banks
to pay their share over eight quarters beginning in June 2024.
Wells Fargo will not be alone in having to pay the FDIC.
“Banks with total assets of more than $50 billion would pay more than 95% of
a special fee aimed at making up a $15.8 billion hit to the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp.’s Deposit Insurance Fund in the wake of several bank
failures,” Banking Dive reported.
Banks with assets under $5 billion would be exempt from the special
assessment payments.