Listen To This3lesson 16

President Reagan announced today that he and Soviet leader Gobachev will meet in Iceland October 11th and 12th to prepare for a summit between the two leaders in the United States later this year. The announcement came after the release yesterday from Moscow of American reporter Nicholas Daniloff and a court appearance in New York this morning by accused Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov, who pleaded no contest to espionage charges and was told to leave the United States within twenty-four hours. Zakharov is now on his way back to the Soviet Union and Daniloff has arrived back in the United States. The movement of Daniloff and Zakharov and plans for the meeting in Iceland were also announced today in Moscow. The BBC's Peter Ruff reports. "The announcement makes it clear that this was at Mr. Gorbachev's invitation, and it's also pointed out that this is simply a preparatory meeting to a possible summit. It's pointed out here that it will enable the Soviet Union to focus on arms issues, particularly the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars program, President Reagan's refusal to join a test moratorium, and a possible arms deal involving medium-range missiles in Europe. In a separate announcement, the official news agency Tass revealed that Gennadi Zakharov had, as they put it, been released from custody and was returning home. It made no mention of the fact that he'd pleaded no contest in a court in New York. Then came the first official confirmation from the Soviet Union that the American reporter Nicholas Daniloff had been expelled. The news item did not refer to him as a spy but as someone who'd been engaged in inadmissible activity." BBC correspondent Peter Ruff in Moscow.


There was no mention in the Soviet press today that prominent Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov and his wife will be allowed to leave for the United States by October 7th. Secretary of State Shultz made that announcement in Washington saying Orlov was the driving force behind the Helsinki Monitoring Group of Civil Rights Activists. In 1978, Orlov was sentenced to seven years in a prison camp to be followed by five more years in internal exile. Shultz said Orlov's release was in exchange for that Zakharov and had nothing to do with Daniloff's freedom.


In just eleven days President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev will meet in Iceland for what is described by the two sides as an interim summit or a preparatory summit. The announcement was made at the White House this morning at a news conference held by President Reagen and Secretary of State George Shultz called to discuss the Iceland meeting and the negotiations which had led up to the release of Nicholas Daniloff yesterday. Negotiations for the release of Daniloff went on for over a month. Today, at the same time that the White House news conference was going on, Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze met with the press in New York. NPR's Jim Angle was at the White House, and Mike Shuster was with the Soviet Foreign Minister.
"Jim, since Daniloff was only released yesterday, and the details of the negotiations leading up to his release were not known yesterday, didn't announcement of a summit announced before any discussion of the Daniloff affair come as a surprise?"
"What was a surprise is that we did not know it was coming. It is not a surprise if you look at the overall context of preparations for a summit and the discussions so far. Of course, the US had said it would not attend a summit until the Daniloff case was resolved, and the President said today that he could not have accepted this pre-summit preparatory meeting if Daniloff were still being held. Today the matter was resolved. At least we heard that the other details of the matter's resolution, including the fact that Gennadi Zakharov, the accused Soviet spy, was allowed to plead no contest in a New York court and allowed to leave the United States. The resolution of that matter cleared the way for summit preparations. The meeting, of course, this pre-summit meeting, was proposed by Secretary Gorbachev, in a letter delivered to President Reagan by Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze on September 19th. The announcement of this meeting today at the same time as the resolution of Zakharov's status is a way of both sides saying that they consider the Daniloff matter resolved with the exception of one or two details and that no obstacles now exist in the preparations for summit later this year in the US."
"At the news conference this morning both President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz stress that there had been no trade for Nicholas Daniloff. Jim, was this a trade?"
"Well, clearly, Daniloff's release, Zakharov's quick trial and departure, and the release of the Soviet dissident were all part of one package. But to the extent that definitions are important, especially in the diplomatic world and in terms of principles and precedents, the US has insisted that there was no trade involved here. They say Daniloff was released without a trial, an implicit acknowledgement, if you will, by the Soviet, that he is not a spy. Zakharov, on the other hand, in pleading no contest to espionage charges, allows, in a sense, the US assertion that he was a spy to stand. President Reagan sought to emphasize today in his remark at the White House that these were separate matters. "There is no connection between these two releases. And I don't know just what you have said so far about this. But there were other arrangements with regard to Zakharov that resulted in his being freed." Margo, the President's referring there to what the US sees as the only trade involved in this whole package, and that is the Soviet agreement to allow Soviet human rights activist Yuri Orlov and his wife to leave the Soviet Union by October 7th."


Today in the Supreme Court of the United States, a case involving maternity leave: at issue whether states may require employers to guarantee that pregnant workers are able to return to their jobs after a limited period of unpaid disability leave. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.
Nice states already have laws or regulations that require all employers to protect the jobs of workers who are disabled by pregnancy or childbirth. Depending on what the Supreme Court rules in the case it heard today, those laws will either die or flourish. The test case is from California. It began with Lillian Garland, the receptionist at California Federal Savings and Loan. In 1982, she returned to work after having a child and found she had no job.
"After working for California Federal for over three and a half years, I was told at that time they no longer had a position available for me. My question was, 'Well, what about the job that I've had for so many years?' And they said, 'We hired the person that you trained in your place.' I was in shock."
Officials at California Federal say Garland should not have been surprised, that she'd been told at the time she took pregnancy leave that her job was not guaranteed. But the fact is that California law requires all employers in the state to provide up to four months' disability leave for pregnant workers. The leave time is unpaid, and it is only a available to women who, because of pregnancy or childbirth, are physically unable to work. The law does require that such workers get back the same job unless business necessity makes that impossible. So when Lillian Garland was told she couldn't have her old job back, she filed discrimination charges against the bank. The bank then challenged the California pregnancy disability law in court, claiming that the state law amounted to illegal sex discrimination. The bank's reasoning went like this: Federal law bans discrimination in employment based on pregnancy, but the state law mandates disability leave to women for pregnancy while denying the same leave time to men who are disabled by other ailments, such as heart attacks and strokes. California counters that the state law does not discriminate between men and women, that it treats them both the same as to all ailments, but grants disability leave only to pregnant workers. Moreover, California argues that the state law in fact equalizes the situation between man and woman, allowing them both to have children without losing their jobs. The pregnancy disability case has produced some strange bedfellows. The Reagan Administration is siding with the California business community in arguing that federal law requires no special treatment for pregnancy. Many of the major national women's organizations agree, but argue that the way to cure the problem is to give everybody unpaid disability leave in case of illness. Other women's organizations, particularly in California, argue that singling out pregnancy for special treatment is not sex discrimination. Feminist Betty Friedan defends the California law.
"It's not discrimination against men to do something about the fact that women give birth to children. It's a fact of life. If men could carry the baby, if men could go through the nine months, if men could have the labor pain, you know, they also should have coverage for pregnancy. You're not discriminating against men; you're recognizing a fact of life: that women are different than men."
On the other side, the lawyer for the bank, Ted Olson, argues that special treatment for pregnancy is obviously discrimination, and that California companies risk being sued by one group of people if they follow federal law and by another group of people if they follow state law.
"The California law requires special treatment of pregnancy; the federal law requires equal treatment of pregnancy. An employer is entitled to know which law it must follow."
The fact is, though, that much of the California business community objects, most of all, to being told that it has to provide any disability leave. Here is Don Butler, President of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, which is a party to this law suit.
"What we have to get back to, though, is who's going to set the disability leave policies. Is the federal government, is the state of California, or are we, the employers, going to set? You, the employee, have the choice of working for our company under the following conditions or working for another company under other conditions. And I believe that that was what built this country to be a great free enterprise system. And if we're going to legislate it, then we're going to destroy a lot of the incentives to ..."
"But basically you don't want to be told to have a disability policy at all."
"Right."
In the Supreme Court this morning, perhaps the pivotal question was asked by Justice Louis Powell, who posed a hypothetical situation to California Deputy Attorney General Marion Johnston. "Let assume, " said Jusstice Powell, "that a man and a woman in the same company leave their jobs on the same day: he, because he is ill; she, because she's about to have a child. And they return on the same day, but under the California law she gets her job back and he does not. Is that fair?" asks Justice Powell. Lawyer Johnston responded, "It may not be fair, but it's legal. California law," she said, "simply requires that employers treat all their employees, men and women, in the same way with respect to pregnancy. But, since men don't get pregnant, they don't get the time off." A decision in the California case is not expected until next year. I'm Nina Totenberg in Washingtom.