Gender Pay Equity

aerin · **Posted:** Fri Jun 08, 2012 12:33 am

Can someone explain to me the argument against this law? Well, aside from the fact that the Democrats support it?

Right now, if I talk with women and men that I work with, comparing our positions, education, experience and salaries, I could get fired (potentially).

Companies have no incentive to pay men and women equally. From my understanding, this varies depending on the state.

What's the argument against putting this into law? We have too many laws? If we paid women more, we'd have to fire more people (or wouldn't be able to hire people)? I don't understand why we're still having this argument in 2012.

HighMaintenanceMe · **Posted:** Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:04 am

From a Yahoo new editorial at http://news.yahoo.com/gop-regret-blocking-equal-pay-women-135900740.html

Quote:

. . . No. Voters will see through this election-year ploy: "Three cheers for the Senate filibuster," says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Democrats are playing partisan games with this utterly unnecessary bill: After all, the U.S. already has plenty of laws prohibiting gender-pay discrimination. Furthermore, the bill "ought to be called the 'Trial Lawyer Paycheck Act,' since it is a recipe for a class-action boom" that will hurt business profits and reduce pay across the board. This type of overreaching legislation "is precisely the reason that voters elected more Republicans in 2010."
"The trial lawyer paycheck act"

Actually, more gender-discrimination suits are needed: Republicans argue that the bill would lead to an "unnecessary and soul-crushing number of lawsuits against employers," but the country actually needs far more pay-gap suits, says Bryce Covert at Forbes. Studies "have found no other way to explain at least some of the gap than discrimination," and yet the number of gender-discrimination cases are falling. Only last year, the Supreme Court "knocked down a suit against Walmart, handing down a decision that makes it even harder to bring these cases." In the "face of a gap that is only getting worse, it would seem the number of cases could stand to get a boost."
"Republicans are wrong: We need more equal pay litigation, not less"

I am very lucky to work for a company that is pretty good at Gender Pay Equality, even though I tend to bitch about one of my coworkers that accomplishes half the amount of work that I do and is paid half again what I make. I have to step back and look at the fact that he has 25+ years with the company and a degree, so therefore, he is going to get paid a significant amount more.

figaro · **Posted:** Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:00 pm

#1, Why is it that for everything that is wrong in the world, the response is, "there oughta be a law...."?? We cannot legislate paradise on earth. Law has its limitations, and we are too quick to use the force of the legal system when there might be other solutions.

#2 The gap is not this huge crisis in the first place. The 75% statistic that gets bandied about compares the wages of all women to all men. This is ridiculous apples to oranges comparison making. Men take more difficult, dangerous, less desirable jobs, which have to pay more to attract workers. Men who work full time work more hours a week than women who work full time. The real pay gap, when comparing men and women in the same position, with comparable backgrounds, is something like women making 95% of what men do. That is not a huge discrepancy! We can argue about whether that gap needs to be closed, and how we might accomplish that, but it is not a pressing crisis of sex discrimination.

jahedgpeth · **Joined:** Wed May 28, 2008 11:31 pm **Posts:** 2076

Fig stop it.

Working women are just one of the many traditional leftist sub groups that the Obama campaign is targeting this election year to rally support for his second term despite the fact that he has done little to nothing for these same groups in his first term. Early this year it was women needing birth control, then the homosexual community, then working women and most recently it has been immigrants (more specifically, immigrants from Mexico).

Don't worry, Obama will be back to his GW Bush 2.0 schtick once the votes are counted and he wins and none of this will matter again.

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