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Obama Signs Equal Pay Act.

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Red Ranger

Red Ranger

Admiral
In Memoriam
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act today, Jan. 29, 2009, which reverses a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, in a blow to stop wage discrimination against women and others:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090129/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama

It's the first bill Obama has signed into law as president. This is a clear signal that the Obama administration is intent on reversing the war on workers in the U.S., especially over the past eight years. Hooray for progressive politics!

Red Ranger
 
auntiehill said:
The real question is why this wasn't a law already. :vulcan:
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Well, auntiehill, I agree 100%. I guess better late than never. It's pretty evident that the real classs warfare has been perpetrated against the middle class and the lower echelons of society in the U.S. I am quite happy with how most of how Obama's first couple of weeks are turning out. He's keeping many of his promises, and has brought what he called yesterday that "tough Chicago flintyness" to the White House! Go on with your bad self! -- RR
 
Dayton3 said:
This is a bad idea.

Employers should be free to pay workers what workers are willing to work for.
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So you mean women deserve to be paid less just because they don't have a penis?

I had no idea you could lift things or type with it.
 
Dayton3 said:
This is a bad idea.

Employers should be free to pay workers what workers are willing to work for.
Click to expand...

Based solely on the duties and conditions of the job, and the worker's ability to perform said functions--yes. But when gender, race, and other factors that have no bearing that get into it...I disagree. If men and women do the same work and produce equal output, they should be paid the same.
 
blablover5 said:
Dayton3 said:
This is a bad idea.

Employers should be free to pay workers what workers are willing to work for.
Click to expand...

So you mean women deserve to be paid less just because they don't have a penis?

I had no idea you could lift things or type with it.
Click to expand...

Taken on the surface, it doesn't look like that's what he's saying, based upon the last sentence.
 
Dayton3 said:
This is a bad idea.

Employers should be free to pay workers what workers are willing to work for.
Click to expand...

Ever heard the expression, "Sixty cents on the dollar"? It's a reference to how, for many years, women earned sixty cents for every dollar a man made for doing the same work. Employers have never given a reasonable explanation why a man with the same educational and career background makes more than a woman with the same background. Do you have a reasonable explanation? -- RR
 
Neroon said:
blablover5 said:
Dayton3 said:
This is a bad idea.

Employers should be free to pay workers what workers are willing to work for.
Click to expand...

So you mean women deserve to be paid less just because they don't have a penis?

I had no idea you could lift things or type with it.
Click to expand...

Taken on the surface, it doesn't look like that's what he's saying, based upon the last sentence.
Click to expand...

My understanding is that the original law was worked in such a horrific way that women had only 80 days upon being hired to figure out if they were being paid less to do the same job as another man and do something about it. Otherwise the government didn't care.

Yeah how practical is that? You're new to a job and you just love to hang out at the water cooler gossiping about salaries.
 
I do want to add another explanation this article didn't cover. Part may be outright, intentional discrimination. Another is that the tenure system in many companies, on which pay raises and seniority are based, does not account for non-traditional career paths in many cases. Someone who takes part-time work, job-shares, or exits the workforce to be a full-time parent for any length of time does not get the same opportunity for pay raises as those who do not.

Now, I'm not quite sure HOW to go about putting that right, but it is a problem when you consider that more often the burden of child care falls upon women and you don't (AS OFTEN) see men make these sorts of career sacrifices for the sake of their child. As time goes on, the effect is that women more and more often get left behind in advancement and pay...sometimes even pay for the same work if there are missing merit raises that a man who stayed in the workforce full-time would've had.
 
I've read studies in the past (don't have link) that women tend to take more sick days and miss work more frequently than men.

And of course there is maternity leave which normally isn't a male thing.

Besides which, if a company has two people wanting a job, one is willing to work for 25 thousand a year and another wants 35 thousand, why can't the company hire the 25 thousand one?
 
It's a tough problem to resolve completely. On the one hand, I don't like the idea of a business being told by someone else how they should conduct their operations, so long as said operations are performed ethically. OTOH, there's no denying that there have been practices that prove ethics aren't exactly at the forefront of a given businesses practices.

Incentive-based actions, as opposed to punitive-based, would be to my mind the better way to go, but to be honest I don't know how practical it would be.
 
I think I'll wait until someone gets a raise before I pass judgment on the effectiveness of this new law.
 
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