Posted on 11/16/2010 10:12:16 AM PST by FreeManDC
Women didn't vote for Democratic candidates in the November election in the numbers expected, so President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to woo them back into the fold by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) in the lame duck session. We don't need this: It's a job killer, not a job creator.
The Paycheck Fairness Act (S.3772) would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Those laws have produced fair results for many years.
Under current law, Title VII entitles an employee to win back pay if the employer intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices. PFA would allow unlimited compensatory and punitive damages to be awarded by judges and juries, even without proof of the employer's intent to discriminate.
The Equal Pay Act currently requires that meeting the test of equal pay for equal work requires that the employees being compared work in the same physical place of business called an establishment. The PFA would redefine the word "establishment" to mean workplaces in the same county or political district.
The PFA would invite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to develop "rules of guidance" to define "establishment" even more broadly. This leaves the door open for the EEOC to compare and force the equalization of pay for a woman's job in a rural area with a man's job in an urban area where the cost of living is much higher.
That obviously would increase employment costs in lower-cost areas. Fewer people would be employed, and some of those jobs could be shipped overseas.
The PFA would eliminate the proven successful, Supreme Court-endorsed system for determining pay discrimination, known as the Interpretative Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination. The PFA would replace it with the Equal Opportunity Survey, which has been proven to be highly inaccurate.
The PFA would vastly increase the number of class-action suits against employers by automatically including employees in class-action suits unless they affirmatively opt out. At present, an employee can join a class-action suit only by choosing to participate.
Increasing class-action business for trial lawyers means the Democrats are pandering to their important donors. These additional costs imposed on employers will also result in shipping more jobs overseas.
Elaine Chao, secretary of labor under President George W. Bush, correctly called the PFA a "job killing, trial attorney bonanza." She said it would encourage employers to view female applicants as instigators of lawsuits instead of contributors to productivity.
The radical feminist movement has been agitating for this PFA-type legislation for nearly three decades. Sometimes they call it "pay equity," and sometimes they call it "comparable worth," but those terms are euphemisms for government wage control.
The feminists want federal law to replace "equal pay for equal work" with "equal pay for equal worth." And they want "worth" to be decided by feminist bureaucrats and judges.
"Equal work" can be judged by objective factors such as experience, time in the labor force, hours worked per week, working conditions and the work actually done. "Worth" is a very subjective concept. Most people probably think they are worth more than they are being paid and deserve a raise.
The Obama feminists recite the tiresome mantra that women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. That's completely false because it doesn't take into account that men take many high-risk and unpleasant jobs, suffering 90 percent of occupational fatalities, so they should earn more.
Each of us is paid a compromise between what we think we're worth and what someone is willing to pay. Those millions of decisions add up to what we call the private enterprise system and the free market economy.
Why are football and baseball players paid more than the president? Lawyers more than ministers? Rock stars more than musicians in major symphony orchestras? Should government decide what people are worth and bias the pay scales based on gender?
If it were really true that businesses pay women less than men for the same work, then cost-conscious bosses would hire only or mostly women. Since that doesn't happen, there must be other factors.
The proper role of government is to provide equal opportunity, not preferential treatment based on warped social theory, especially when the feminist arguments are so demonstrably false, and their demands will increase unemployment.
People who work longer hours earn more, and they should, yet government statistics are based on a 35-hour work week even though many, especially men on average, work longer hours. Equal pay for everyone is a Marxist notion -- we believe in equal pay for equal work.
Equal worth? So a Phoenix freight company will be forced to pay the data entry woman sitting in an air conditioned office the same as the drug tested, FBI investigated, CDL certified truck driver handling heavy freight in a 140 degree trailer?
I’m really getting sick of this crap. So here goes...
I say that to make it fair, when men and women have jobs where there’s any physical requirement, the men should make more money! How’s that? For instance, I know a guy who’s a nurse at a phych hospital, and he’s huge and extremely in shape. A very big guy. Well, guess who they always want to be there when there’s dangerous patients being dealt with? Yeah, that’s who. Mister “I make the same as a 99 lb female nurse!”
The way it was originally proposed would have required multi-state companies to pay the same regardless of location. It was aimed at making Right to Work states less appealing than union controlled states. I suspect that someone figured out that the companies would move all their jobs to the lower cost states, rather than what they wanted.
Marxist ideology has never worked, always has created mass deaths and poverty. Free markets and Capitalism are the only way to create a free and wealthy society. Employers have the right to set wages and people have the right to accept or decline. Minimum wage is Marxist and should end because it only creates more poverty and takes rights away from the employer. Governments should not be running their businesses and making their decisions. It is what has ruined all socialist countries. Get government OUT of the work place. It is unconstitutional in this country.
Such laws are designed as poisonous solutions to non-problems. If someone doesn't want to pay you what you're worth, he's stupid. Go work for someone smarter and out-compete the bigoted company. Problem solved, and—so sorry!—no employment opportunity created for busybody regulators or ambulance chasers.
If the left were REALLY worried about women, they'd be against the Muslims. They'd close the Mexican border so that OTM’s don't come in. They'd express a little outrage instead of misguided PC tolerance at the Muslim terrorists.
Instead, they say, “Let's kill a few more jobs while the economy is in the toilet!”
Geniuses.
I went through this in the 1980’s. The secretaries thought they should be paid the same as the technicians. Job swapping for a day didn’t go they way they planned.
The law is a trainwreck. What a great parting gift for conservative control of the House!
Here will be a major unreported impact of the law. The major tool for increased compensation in the private sector and some parts of the government sector is competing job offers. An employer who makes or responds to a competing job offer may be in violation of this law however. This strategy requires mobility so I believe that men can more often take advantage of this strategy. Employers may be forced into increasing salaries of women employees if they want to hire or retain male talent. Employers will most likely respond by curtailing competing job offers and moving work abroad to seek top talent. This law will increase the cost of top US talent except perhaps for female top talent.
Any bill they pass with the words ‘fairness, unfairness, affordable, etc’, watch out!
“A major goal of the feminist manifesto is to downplay and discredit male talent. Their ultimate goal is to take away our jobs and turn the tables.”
They would like to make conservative men submit to lefist women. I do not think that conservative women approve however. Conservative women do not seem to have the same voice because women tend to vote for rats. Control and submission are clearly the goals.
Only looking out for what is best for the country while putting personal gain aside. /s
They don't expect to be pampered because they already are. What they want is to push men around and get their money.
There is no such thing as a liberal man.
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