Do women deserve equal pay?
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has been throwing daggers into right wing sides, once again. It is the first law President Obama signed into effect when he took office in January of 2009, only three days into his term.…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
26 - Dr Dreadful
I saw it happen to my wife at a home building company she had been at for a while when a guy who had no experience in industry got the same job she had through a friend and started off making more. It's bull crap
Yes, it is, but did he get paid more than your wife because he was a man, or was it just cronyism?
27 - Baronius
I said "the same", and I shouldn't have. Some studies show women earning slightly less. I've seen one (that I can't find now) that shows them earning slightly more. And since the studies are generally censuses, you can't talk about statistical significance. My point is that their earnings are sufficiently similar that any effort to make them closer is unlikely to be fair.
You have to make some questionable assumptions applying adjustments to particular cases. If a company has 110 employees, 60 men and 50 women, and the women work 7.7 hours per day and the men work 8.1 hours per day, and the men average 10.2 years experience and the women average 8.2 years, and the women earn $36000 per year and the men earn $48000 per year, by my calculations the women are discriminated against by 2%. Of course, my calculations are absurd, because depending on the industry and the person, experience has to be weighted differently. Pam would look at the numbers I just presented and say that there's $12000 discrimination per woman. In my simulation, I had $900 discrimination per woman. But if you can't look at my numbers and derive the amount of discrimination I factored in, then you shouldn't expect a business to be able to defend itself against charges of discrimination in that way.
28 - Pam Messingham
Don't assume what "Pam" would think...what Pam thinks is this...the men worked more hours...if paid hourly...that is excusable if the pay rate is the same. As for the difference of 8.2 and 10.2 years experience...that's inane. No..B...I'm not looking to hang discrimination where it doesn't belong...only where it does. You have a male bartender...paid the same as a female bartender....she makes a ton more money....she has 5 years experience...he has two....she cleans up at the end of the night and he can't afford cab fair home...discrimination...no. Should the bar owner make up the difference? Of course not. They are equally paid.
29 - Baronius
Pam, I believe that you're not looking to claim discrimination falsely. It's just hard to tell where it takes place. It's like the WWI Veteran's benefit fund - sure, there are still some cases, and they deserve attention, but if you've got 1100 people running the outfit then there's something askew. Now tell me, Pam, looking at the numbers I put in comment #27, how much discrimination would you have guessed is taking place? And what makes you so confident in deciding how a particular firm should weight employees' experience?
30 - Pam Messingham
In #27 if the people are being paid at the same hourly rate...there isn't discrimination if he puts in more hours than she does IF she is offered the same amount of hours and he isn't allocated those hours. That become a different story. Af for experience, that can be weighed in a multitude of ways. On the job experience, life experience, and education. A great example of this is a specific workplace of someone I know. Three people... two hold degrees. (these are engineers at a very high ranking facility) One doesn't. Out of the three people two are paid equally...the one that is paid less, for the same job and with a degree does NOT make as much as the other two men. Discrimination.
31 - Baronius
Pam, do you work with these people? A lot of people tell stories about their workplace and they're always the hero, but until you work with them you don't know what their strengths and weaknesses are. I never give my friends the benefit of the doubt when they tell me about their bad co-workers, because I know that I could say the same thing and I'd be unfair about it. And there are plenty of people who have special experience or training, or have some additional responsibility at work that you don't know about. Equal pay for equal work assumes that there are any two jobs that are equal, and I've rarely found that to be the case. If women make .78 of what men make, and we can account for .20 of the rest, I'm going to be hesitant about making too many assumptions about the remaining .02.
And, of course, we're not talking about a law that ends the pay gap. We're talking about a law that allows for lawsuits over pay discrepancies beyond 180 days. It's fair to ask whether this particular law addresses the pay gap in an effective way. Or not - maybe it's all Nazis and un-Americans who are responsible. But we've already demonstrated that the majority of the pay gap isn't Nazis, and we already have laws in place to prosecute the remaining cases which are currently taking place.
32 - El Bicho
"the actual discrimination must have occurred within the 180-day timeframe. Look it up."
Then the second paragraph of this article needs to be amended.
33 - Pam Messingham
Please don't condescend. I'm not an idiot and by asking these questions just shows me that you think like the men that talk down to women like they are missing links or parts of a story. I know this as fact. Assume, once again, if you will...but you know what they say about people that assume!
34 - Pam Messingham
Thanks EL but that isn't how I read it. I'm sorry if I mislead. That makes it even worse because how would you even know in 180 days...if ever.
35 - Baronius
I didn't think I was talking down to you. But I'll do my best not to condescend if you try not to call your opponents Nazis.
36 - Pam Messingham
I didn't call anyone a Nazi.
37 - Clav
I worked in the airline industry for 30 years, beginning in 1971. Even back then, women made the same pay as men in the same job; and if more experienced or with greater skills, more.
There was one difference, however. In general, women worked harder and more conscientiously than their male counterparts. As a result, when I was hiring, all other considerations being equal, I always hired the woman.
That practice really paid off when I fired a woman whom I had caught cheating on her expense account and lying that she had been on the road making sales calls in her territory, when in fact, I found out she had not even been in the city that week. I replaced her with another woman, and a few weeks later the woman I had fired sued me, my boss, and the company for gender discrimination in her firing. She folded like a cheap tent when our attorneys pointed out that her replacement was also a woman.
But she was the exception.
38 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
When it comes to the 'Nazi' violation of Godwin's Law, we called no one a Nazi...but we did point out the eerie similarity between the MS GOP governor's proclamation and the Nazis' "blood libel". When words and actions fit so closely to what Nazis did, is it wrong to point out the similarity? Or is it wrong to NOT point out the similarity?
39 - Glenn Contrarian
Clav -
Props to you...but you must admit that all to often people like you are the exception to the rule.
40 - Cannonshop
#39 what, a manager who wants to actually get good work done? Probably IS the exception there.
41 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
There's a difference between a manager who "wants to get good work done" and a manager who not only does what's necessary to ensure good work gets done but is loyal to those under his or her supervision.
Almost all managers want to get good work done...but all too seldom is there the manager who goes the extra mile to make sure the workers have not only the negative but especially the positive motivation to produce good work.
Clavos' observation about women at work dovetails precisely with what I've seen - women tend to work harder and more conscientiously than men do...but such doesn't go for all women. Some will try to game the system. Sadly, most Republicans use the excuse of the one bad apple to deny equal-pay rights for the rest of the bushel of good apples.