Posted on 09/22/2010 5:24:28 AM PDT by reaganaut1
AMONG the top items left on the Senate’s to-do list before the November elections is a “paycheck fairness” bill, which would make it easier for women to file class-action, punitive-damages suits against employers they accuse of sex-based pay discrimination.
The bill’s passage is hardly certain, but it has received strong support from women’s rights groups, professional organizations and even President Obama, who has called it “a common-sense bill.”
But the bill isn’t as commonsensical as it might seem. It overlooks mountains of research showing that discrimination plays little role in pay disparities between men and women, and it threatens to impose onerous requirements on employers to correct gaps over which they have little control.
The bill is based on the premise that the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, has failed; for proof, proponents point out that for every dollar men earn, women earn just 77 cents.
But that wage gap isn’t necessarily the result of discrimination. On the contrary, there are lots of other reasons men might earn more than women, including differences in education, experience and job tenure.
When these factors are taken into account the gap narrows considerably — in some studies, to the point of vanishing. A recent survey found that young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts, mostly because more of them earn college degrees.
Moreover, a 2009 analysis of wage-gap studies commissioned by the Labor Department evaluated more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the aggregate wage gap “may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”
In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce [for family reasons].
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
When I post a sensible opinion piece from the NYT, some Freepers are puzzled. Sommers is a guest contributor, not a columnist (like Krugman) or an editorial board member.
Great idea! Put more rules on businesses, increase the chance of law suits, give another reason not to hire. This should be great for the unemployment problem.
This is liberal gobbledygook for "the market works". Wage differentials were the hot research topic when I was a grad student (back just after Gutenberg got his printing press working). The biggest single cause of the wage differential was the loose attachment to the labor force by women because of family responsibilities. When that was factor out, wages were almost the same. Indeed, women at the Westinghouse assembly plants actually had higher wages than men.
Common sense says that in ANY business, it's ultimately the bottom-line and customer retention that drives the owners, in the long run.
That said; I don't care about the gender, sex life, color, origin, etc. of the employee but rather care about their work ethic, production, character, and their contribution to the success of the business. ANY other forced rules have NOTHING to do with the success of my business, unless I'm looking for government handouts/payback, which ALWAYS are going to be used as vote-buying and dependency-creation, or to fund re-election and power.
Same here, and I know, I know...it was unfair that we scientists got to use that new movable type whilst the art history students had to use the quill pens (but that's another story!).
The biggest single cause of the wage differential was the loose attachment to the labor force by women because of family responsibilities. When that was factor out, wages were almost the same. Indeed, women at the Westinghouse assembly plants actually had higher wages than men.
The university had been harangued about the disparity in numbers of female faculty, so they'd been hiring lots of freshly minted female PhDs and getting the M:F ratio closer to parity. So then the womyn started complaining about how the university had been fooling everyone with the progress because the average female salary was falling!
Since new hires have less experience, the university had lowered the average female salary by disproportionately hiring women...the increased gap was actually a sign of their "progress" in hiring more women! I don't need to tell you that when an analysis was completed, normalizing experience, education, department, accomplishments, etc., the females were actually compensated more for the same position!
Except Air America. :-)
Back in the 80’s when women were starting to enter the electronic technicians field, they were paid less than the men who had 5-10 years experience. So the company I worked at came up with the “quartile” system for Tech I, II and III. You could only get so much of a raise withing your quartile. So the women caught up to the men when they stopped giving the men raises.
Yep, but somehow that information gets buried.
So the overweight homely hooker should get the same pay as the looker?
(Perhaps if the libtard politicos are paying.)
You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Free market works.
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