Posted on 04/08/2014 4:03:52 AM PDT by markomalley
Today is “Equal Pay Day” for those who believe that The Man is keeping women down.
Convincing people that injustice is taking place is a great way to push your policy agenda—and that’s where “Equal Pay Day” comes from. It’s the left’s claim that women in America are paid only about 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.
But as Foundry Senior Contributor Genevieve Wood has explained, that talking point comes from creative—not accurate—comparisons.
The problem with the 77 percent statistic, calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, is that it doesn’t compare the salaries of women and men in the same profession. Instead, it lumps all professions together. So, if high school teachers make less than congressmen (talk about something that ought to be fixed!), and there are more women who are teachers and more men in the U.S. Congress, then yes, the numbers will show that men make more than women. But if you compare the salary of a congresswoman to a congressman, guess what? They make the same.
>>> What the left doesn’t want you to know about pay for women
In fact, sex-based discrimination in the workplace has been illegal since 1963. And since then, “Women have not only caught up to men in many professional endeavors; single, young women are outperforming their male counterparts in urban areas,” says Heritage’s Romina Boccia, the Grover M. Hermann Fellow. “No surprise there, as women already earn more bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees than men do.”
Equal Pay Day is supposed to be about boosting women, but President Obama and his allies are taking the opportunity to push two policy proposals that would hurt women (and men) in the workplace.
1. Raising the minimum wage.
The White House is pushing the idea that a minimum wage increase would help women, because women make up the majority of the workforce in several low-wage industries. What that actually means, however, is that hiking the minimum wage would deal a blow to women—since those are the jobs that would be lost with a wage hike. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would kill off 500,000 jobs—and the Employment Policies Institute projects that 57 percent of those jobs are held by women.
>>> Get the facts about the minimum wage
2. Mandating “paycheck fairness.”
Another bad idea Congress has rejected in the past is surfacing again: the “Paycheck Fairness Act.” But a law already exists that prohibits discrimination based on a worker’s sex—it’s called the Equal Pay Act, and it’s been law since 1963. So what would the Paycheck Fairness Act do for women’s pay?
Heritage labor expert James Sherk explains that the proposal is more about inviting lawsuits than anything else.
the PFA allows employees to sue businesses that pay different workers different wages—even if those differences have nothing to do with the employees’ sex. These lawsuits can be brought for unlimited damages, giving a windfall to trial lawyers.
How would it hurt workers? Well, you can’t get a raise for being a high-performing employee—male or female—if it’s mandated that everyone with the same job title makes the same salary. Sherk notes the downward pressure it would put on pay:
Companies should be allowed to reward good performance without risking a lawsuit. Punishing companies that do not adopt uniform pay scales would cut the wages of both men and women.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he will bring up both of these policies this week, and President Obama is signing executive orders that will increase the amount of information available about federal contractors’ salaries in the name of “equal pay.”
It’s policies like this that are keeping all American workers down.
If there's an equal pay day, shouldn't there also be an equal work day?
I thought it was at least worth discussing.
shhh... a liberal is using thought and logic. Don’t spook him.
More women work part time, which is probably the basis of the “equal work day” argument.
If the “equal pay” movement makes progress, we could see part time jobs eliminated in favor of full time jobs with overtime - which would cause a massive exodus of women.
I had a liberal friend (I know, I know) who loudly parrotted this constantly.
The truth is, men usually make more than women because men engage in industries of occupation that are physcially demanding and dangerous and pay accordingly more.
I’m not suggesting there are no women lumberjacks, miners, law enforcement officer, firefolks, etc, but the numbers on work requiring a degree of physical ruggedness is overwhelmingly male, and that’s where the higher pay comes from.
It's all a farce.
If you compare men and women DOING THE SAME JOB and with the same years of uninterrupted experience, the women make slightly MORE (because companies don't want the risk of being sued for pay discrimination).
I come in contact with drivers that move containers around. There are almost no such women and experiments with women failed.
Women can not reach the door latches and if they can reach them can not close those that are stiff and corroded. Most women are thus excluded by virtue of their size and strength.
Shhhh...don't tell anyone about this. It could cause politicians to pander and recipients of preferential policies to vote for panderers!
And not only that, they take the average pay of all women--probably even women that aren't employed, or work at petty jobs doing housekeeping, or cashiering, or at some other menial task.
Id have much more respect (and would not be surprised at how non-existent a "gap" might be), if they compared men and women employed as chemical engineers; or, men and women CPAs, accountants, office managers, etc. There might still be gaps, but you'd find that they're due to women taking time off from work to have and raise children.
Well, as far as women taking time off to deal with children and family, the liberals don’t like that either. If studies reveal this happens, you can imagine a renewed liberal push for unlimited but paid family leave, among other changes.
I thought for sure that electing a homo president would be one of the ways.
1) Tackle them with a full-body, running tackle.
2) Set their cubicals on fire.
“Two Ways to Hurt Women in the Workplace
1) Tackle them with a full-body, running tackle.
2) Set their cubicals on fire.”
Or steal their Hostess Cherry Pie.
That happened to me once and I was no good for the rest of the week.
.
Look, I said 'hurt', not 'torture'.
If employers could pay women 77% as much as men for the same work, why would any men have jobs (other than jobs too strenuous for most women to perform)? Employers would save a ton of money just by not hiring any men.
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