"Equal Pay for Equal Work?" Government Has No Idea What That is

American Thinker ^ | 09/30/2014 | Selwyn Duke

[SeekAndFind]

“Equal pay for equal work!” the mantra goes. “Women get only 73 cents on a man’s dollar!” These are oft-heard slogans, and we may well hear them again during the fall campaign with the War on Women afoot. Now, going beyond the rhetoric, it’s not widely known but nonetheless true that the intersex pay gap is attributable to different career choices men and women make: women tend to choose less lucrative fields (e.g., soft sciences instead of hard ones), work shorter hours even when “full time,” are more likely to value personal fulfillment and job flexibility over money, are more inclined to take time off, generally have less job tenure and more often decline promotions. But while I’ve examined these factors at length in the past, the topic today is something more fundamental. This is that there would be a problem with even a well-intended equal-pay-for-equal-work scheme:

Hardly anyone knows what equal work is.

And the government hasn’t the foggiest idea.

Recently I mentioned how women tennis players now receive the same prize money as the men at Grand Slam events (Wimbledon; and the US, French and Australian opens) and how this is hailed as a victory for “equality.” Yet since the women still only play best of three sets but the men best of five, this actually means the men must work longer for the same pay. Even this, however, doesn’t truly illuminate the issue: what actually constitutes “equal work” in professional tennis?

I’ll introduce the point with another example. The top 10 female fashion models earned 10 times as much as their male counterparts in 2013. Is this unequal pay for equal work? Not really.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The whole concept of “work” generally eludes them.

[Personal Responsibility]

The whole concept that “equality is good” is wrong.

[dfwgator]

The whole concept of “work” generally eludes them.

[Iron Munro]

Womyn employees who sit at an IRS computer surfing porn sites for hours every day should be paid the same as the male employees who do it.

IRS Admits Its Employees Spend Work Time Surfing Porn Sites

[Dilbert San Diego]

The author doesn’t mention the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 forbids paying women less than men for doing the same job as a man.

This election season, the Democrats have been saying they think women should be paid the same as a man for the same job.

Obama himself has said this.

My observation is - Obama has been president for almost six years. If women are really being paid less for doing the same work as a man, this is already against the law. Meaning that he and the Justice Department already have all the legal tools as their disposal to file lawsuits, take executive action, etc. against this alleged discrimination, if it is really happening.

When liberals campaign saying they favor equal pay for equal work, somebody really should ask them, if elected, what exactly do they propose to do about this alleged problem. Since there is already a law on the subject, it’s not as if Congress needs to pass a law to deal with this. It’s already been done, years ago.

[Arrowhead1952]

The military is an example of equal pay for equal work via rank structure. All people of the same rank make the exact of pay, but many females cannot perform the same tasks as males. I’ve never saw a female mechanic put batteries into an M900 series truck by herself.

[Right Brother]

Since payroll constitutes such a large percentage of overhead in a business, and companies are getting away with paying women so much less, why hire male employees? How about the disparity between public and private sector pay? I have a new mantra: “Private sector employees make 68 cents for every public employee dollar!”.

[MrB]

If women do the same work for 73 cents on the dollar, and minorities are underpaid because they are minorities,

where are all the businesses using this to their competitive advantage?

A 27% labor cost advantage would be extraordinary!

(The above is completely lost on the left)

[DugwayDuke]

“When liberals campaign saying they favor equal pay for equal work, somebody really should ask them, if elected, what exactly do they propose to do about this alleged problem. Since there is already a law on the subject, it’s not as if Congress needs to pass a law to deal with this. It’s already been done, years ago.”

Some liberals that have answered that question. Essentially, they would create a government system that would determine what occupations are equal to others. Nurses versus firefighters, for example. The criteria would be things that bureaucrats enjoy, like credentials, etc. IOW, if two jobs both required a four year degree, then they could be considered equal. School teachers would be considered the equivalent of engineers and you would have to pay them the same wages. There usually is a seniority component as well.

The simple way to imagine this is to consider how the government sets pay scales. Pay grades 1-15. Pay steps 1-10. If you have a bachelors degree, you’re a pay grade 12. Four years experience, you’re a pay step 3. No bonuses for performance and no consideration of whether you’re a physicist or a sociology major.

[Dilbert San Diego]

You are right.

I’ve worked for 30 years in the financial side of a few different businesses.

In each business I’ve worked in, payroll costs, simply paying the employees, constituted the biggest expense of running the business by far.

And in each business, I never observed this alleged pay discrimination between men and women.

Some job categories contained more women than men, and vice versa.

But within job categories, every company I have worked for paid women employees on the same pay scales as men.

So I question the very premise of the liberals talking points on this one.

And again, point out that what they talk about is already against the law. So if this pay discrimination is really a problem, Obama already has all the legal tools to deal with it. Where has he been for the last six years, if this problem has been out there all these years, and he’s just now talking about it during a campaign season????

[fruser1]

Work is measured in Joules. When accused of not paying equally, demand a measurement.

[Mouton]

I love it, the true engineer’s answer!

[fruser1]

Work can also be measured in calories:

“the average man burns 60 calories walking fast, painting, weeding and washing a car, while the average woman burns 45 calories doing the same activities”

so men should be paid at least 33% more than women. If they are only making 27% more, they are underpaid.

Above stat from:

http://healthyliving.azcentral.com/calorie-expenditure-men-vs-women-7165.html

[Dilbert San Diego]

You are right. If this gap exists the way liberals claim it does, then we should see all girl businesses all over the place. Such places would simply not hire men, due to their ability to pay females less.

[Dilbert San Diego]

If bureaucrats get into these areas, then there will never be any solution that would make people satisfied.

How do you do this comparison for college graduates who become teachers vs. those who become petroleum engineers?

How do you do this comparison for secretaries vs. truck drivers?

How do you compare child care workers with unskilled laborers, or random hired help, or “gophers” on a construction job?

How do you address that the vast majority of skilled construction workers on those construction sites are men? While women can get training and apply for such jobs, it appears that very few women want to be plumbers or electricians, or pipefitters, or hang drywall or drive a bulldozer.

If we are going down this road, then liberals will never be happy because they will never find a comparison for which they will be satisfied that women are paid properly.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Their whole point here is for women to make the same amount as men for LESS work, in exchange for voting for Democrats.

[Rusty0604]

Throughout my career (accounting), I was paid a salary and was not an hourly worker. I met so many co-workers that thought if I didn’t work as many hours as they did that I wasn’t working as hard. When I could complete a report or set up a program in a short length of time, they would claim that I was being paid too much money. I would explain to them that I had spent years getting an education and experience and that is why I get paid for what I did.

Most people and the government measure work in a way that “equal work for equal pay” is a farce. It needs to be measured by the value of what a person produces.

People demanding $15 an hour for flipping burgers is a joke.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Most people and the government measure work in a way that “equal work for equal pay” is a farce. It needs to be measured by the value of what a person produces.

Reminds me of Police Officers, Firefighters and the like in New York, whose pension size depends on the LATEST pay stub they get.

So, just as they are closer to the retirement age ( which is scandalously YOUNG by the way ), they rack up as much overtime as they can to “pad” their pay checks even though they don’t do much work in their overtime.

[MrB]

I don’t remember if it was Sowell or Williams (probably the latter) that addresses this premise. I know Williams stated that the absence of such businesses is de facto proof that such a pay discrepancy doesn’t exist.
Sowell addressed it as “you’d have to believe that the business owners think sexism is worth the cost of the competitive disadvantage”.

And, yes, liberals WOULD assert that business owners, even black female business owners, are somehow so racist and sexist that they’d leave this competitive advantage on the table in favor of hiring white males.