NYC can bend Bank ' potty parity ' investment law

10:30 AM investment, parity, potty No Comments

Isolde Raftery, NBC News - 2 days

In a rare move gutgehie?en New York City Buildings Department add an investment bank to break request of the city of potty parity Act and a men's bath & urinals to its trading floors.

Japanese firm Nomura, gearing up move in worldwide Plaza in the city's Midtown area, asked other men permission, bathroom for its fourth floor, the main trading floor to build, expected to be about 550 dealers House. Trade is a male-dominated profession.

The Bank asked existing bathrooms in the three upper floors urinals to trade.

Nomura spokesman Jonathan Hodgkinson request said - which was first reported by the New York post--was approved by the city, presented according to which in March 2012. He would not say why the company asked for the exemption or how many women and men on the work. The post reported that the gender breakdown is 75 percent men, 25 percent women.

In a prepared statement Hodgkinson wrote: "Nomura believes to provide equal employment opportunities and run a working environment in which our staff can, and do, at best."

Steve Solomon, a spokesman of George comfort & sons, which owns the worldwide Plaza, said, that built the baths have been. "Life is satisfied tenants," he said. "they go to the bathroom with a smile."

Nomura, which North American employees has grown to 2.316 900 in 2009, plans to move in this summer.

New York City approved their bathroom equal treatment Act in 2005, requiring new buildings to install bathroom "Lights" in the relationship about 2: 1 in favor of the women. Proponents say that women need more toilets than men, because they last longer and have more bad-like needs than men. The law also applies to building features such as the worldwide Plaza.

But it contains an exception for places where the gender imbalance, such as spas, women's dormitories is pronounced, and men's prisons, where potty parity would be unnecessary.

A spokesman for the City Buildings Department said the Department will receive more information about the request but has released the document on Wednesday.

Bathroom equality advocates criticized Nomura for applying for the exemption - and New York for granting it.

Robert Brubaker, program manager for the American Association restroom, not-for profit, advocates for the availability of toilets, said that he was never a company request the exemption will be heard. Goldman Sachs, another investment bank, which moved recently an exemption for the bathroom-equal treatment Act not requested, a spokeswoman said.

"By their past, their best candidates in the future women can be independent," said Brubaker.

George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf, the up itself as "father of potty parity," said he views add that urinals as a sexist move that sends a negative message to women employees. "they say: 'we discriminated against, in the past so now you have to further us.'"

Banzhaf said that he the city decision Nomura granting an exception can contest.

"If these guys with him can get away, there is no reason why others is not the same," he said.