Posted on 04/06/2014 2:23:21 PM PDT by markomalley
President Obama is preparing to lean on companies that do business with the government with a pair of new executive actions designed to close the wage gap between men and women.
The orders, detailed by a White House official, reflect the latest steps taken by the president to promote income equality without backing from the divided Congress - though both measures are limited in scope.
Obama will unveil the two orders on Tuesday, which marks “Equal Pay Day,” the name given to the point in the year at which an average woman’s pay catches up to what a man doing the same job made in the previous year.
The first measure is meant to prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation. The White House official stressed that the order will neither compel workers to discuss their pay nor employers to reveal salaries.
The order, however, “does provide a critical tool to encourage pay transparency, so workers have a potential way of discovering violations of equal pay laws and able to seek appropriate remedies,” the official said, though details would not be revealed until Tuesday.
Obama will also sign a Presidential Memorandum directing Labor Secretary Tom Perez to draft new regulations requiring contractors to report summary pay information – including data on race and sex – to the agency, the official said.
The measure is designed to ensure equal pay laws, such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which promotes fair pay for women. The law’s namesake will be on hand for Tuesday’s announcement at the White House.
Rep. Laura DeLauro (D-Conn.), who has urged both actions, cheered the planned announcement.
“This is not just about women; it is about ensuring families, who are more reliant on women’s wages than ever, are not being shortchanged,” the Connecticut Democrat said Sunday “Collecting data is a necessary step if we are to identify and end patterns of pay disparity. I am pleased the Labor Department will be taking steps to finally deal with this scourge head-on.”
The steps, which are part of Obama’s “year of action,” follow a January executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour for federal contract workers.
An across-the-board minimum wage hike championed by Obama would require an act of Congress.
He's going to have everybody working on a union pay scale before long. To hell with incentivising achievement.
This will of course not shrink the income gap between the ruling class and the slave class.
I’ve yet to get a coherent explanation from a liberal that refutes the following argument:
They claim that women get 77% as much as men for identical work. So, if I own a business and need an employee to write computer code or drive a cab or paint a house or shovel coal, and a woman will do the identical job for 23% less than a man, why wouldn’t I hire the woman? Every time.
In which case the demand for this identical, cheaper labor will be bid up, whereas the men would have to start offering their services cheaper or be priced out of the marketplace by women. It’s Economics 101, a course that Obama and his liberal cohort have avoided like the plague.
Can I ask a stupid question?
Are women really paid less than men for doing the same job?
It is against the law to pay women less than men for the same job. This goes all the way back to the Equal Pay Act of 1963, that it is unlawful to pay differently for the same work.
My stupid question revolves around the fact that such practice is already against the law, and has been for years. So, if this is really a major problem in today’s world, Obama and Eric Holder already have all the legal tools as their disposal, to fight this alleged disparity.
So where are all of the lawsuits, with women plaintiffs showing us how they are paid less than their male counterparts?
The courts should be full of lawsuits on their very issue, if this is still a problem in our country. And the laws and court rulings would back up any woman who can demonstrate such discrimination. So where are the lawsuits?
Sorry, I asked a series of stupid questions, not just one. But it baffles me for the president to occasionally throw out this statement that men are paid less than women, but at the same time, does not order his Justice Department to use the laws already in place to fight this alleged injustice.
While women may earn only 77% of men, on average — the lie comes in adding “for identical work”. That’s demonstrably false — especially in the public sector, where everyone is on the same pay grid. The usual deceptive line is “for work of equal value”. That’s much harder to disprove, because “equal value” is whatever you say it is. If it were “equal market value”, the lie would be more apparent (although not as apparent as “for identical work”)
Sorry I miswrote, I meant to say that women are paid less than men, and the president throws this line out there as if it’s common knowledge and something we all agree is happening.
I wouldn't mind that. The problem is when "equal value" is whatever Obama says it is. :)
Also, women tend to work less hours and take more leave to care for family. Of course, this is one thing the liberals claim is not fair. I guess they think it is only fair to force an employer to pay for employee’s family and personal problems. Silly me, I thought people got paid for the quantity and quality of their work.
Of course on the other hand, it also means, men are more likely to be laid off, because they are paid more, and it saves money for the company,
> This will of course not shrink the income gap between the ruling class and the slave class.
Its not about that; its about driving the stake further into the heart of the U.S. and causing the prices to hyperinflate and kill the backbone of our nation - the middle claas. The ones who actually use their own money to pay for groceries, gas, services, and income taxes. You kill the middle class and the U.S. is done. He knows exacrtly what he’s doing. He studied the plan in college.
It’s all baloney. The liberal socialists need something new to carry on about now that they have been successful in trashing health care. It’s the usual pattern: create a phony crisis — in this case, that women are being oppressed — then pass legislation to supposedly solve the crisis, but instead ruin everyone and everything, cost the taxpayer huge amounts of money and further erode our freedoms
The true believers eat this all up without actually determining, first, whether there really is a problem, and second, whether the proposed “solution” will do more harm than good.
I worked as a legal secretary for 35 years. I made good money, but I never expected to be paid the salary of an attorney. If i had wanted more money, I would have gone to law school. The low information voter believes there is this infinite supply of money to pay everyone a fabulous salary. They don’t realize that if every employee made the same salary as the corporate CEO, the company would go bankrupt in short order.
> Also, women tend to work less hours and take more leave to care for family. Of course, this is one thing the liberals claim is not fair. I guess they think it is only fair to force an employer to pay for employee’s family and personal problems. Silly me, I thought people got paid for the quantity and quality of their work.
Put a man and woman side by side doing equal labor and see if they do equal. If she does; pay her the same. If not you’re back to square and the reaon they probably make less than their male counterparts. Pay should be compensatory in proportion to performance. Vice versa if the man can’t perform as well as the woman at a particular task. Hire the best candidate for the job without regard to skin color as well.
A few years ago I saw a column by someone (Mike Adams?) about Equal Fatality day, which he said would be some particular day about eight or ten years down the road.
That would be the day on which female on-the-job fatalities would catch-up with male on-the-job fatalities for the year in which he wrote the column.
Hey, Mr. President! How about paying women equally on your own White House staff, ***hole?
Man you totally nailed it, like UK’s 3-pointer yesterday.
I question the same thing. I thought the The Equal Pay Act of 1963 already put laws on the books to address this?
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