Labor Day News: 'Young Workers: A Lost Decade’

[FayeforCure]

And in all of the jobs that I have had in my adult life, women make equal pay as men.  Just my personal experience.

This seems to be a ritual among Republicans: if they didn't see it, it probably didn't happen.

Women STILL don't make equal pay. I think this summary of history regarding the lack of equal pay for women, should help you (BTW, that is one of the reasons I abhore the fact that Congress is still made up only 17% of women,...........many men like you, don't see the issues women deal with)

On Pay Day, Women Are Still Not Equal
Opinion
By Nancy Ratzan
Published August 26, 2009, issue of September 04, 2009.
Print Email Share Author Archive Forward Forum
On August 26 we celebrated Women’s Equality Day â€" the 89th anniversary of the date on which women gained the right to vote through ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Since then, women have sought economic equality, too, achieving a great victory in 1963 with the passage of the Equal Pay Act.

But it has been a rocky road, and we are at another milestone in the struggle for equal pay. When the 1963 law was passed, women earned 59 cents for every dollar men earned doing the same work. Now it’s still only 80 cents on the dollar. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which would greatly strengthen the Equal Pay Act, has been passed by the House and is now pending before the Senate.

A landmark bill, the 1963 Equal Pay Act gave hope to millions of working women that they would no longer be second-class citizens in the workplace. Along with passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act a year later, it meant perhaps the tide of wage discrimination was finally turning.

It didn’t. Years of hostile court rulings whittled away the law’s protections. Employers could defend themselves against charges of discrimination by citing a “factor other than sex” to justify disparities. That phrase has been stretched beyond recognition as judges adopted the interpretations urged on them by recalcitrant employers.

Paycheck fairness is not just a matter of principle. It’s a matter of survival. Inequality begins with minor discrepancies â€" young women age 15 to 24 earn 95% of what young men earn. By the time women reach age 45 to 64 â€" usually the prime years for higher earnings â€" women who work full-time, year-round earn only 72% of what men do. Not only are their current wages depressed, but their ability to provide for their children’s future and to retire with a decent income is severely compromised.

It’s clear that millions of women need a law that works. The first attempts to fix the Equal Pay Act go back to 1994. After 15 years of struggle, the hope is that with a new Congress progress is now possible.

The pending Paycheck Fairness Act would permit victims to obtain compensatory and punitive damages. It would make it easier to pursue class-action lawsuits. It would bar employer retaliation when victims share salary information among themselves. It would disallow such employer defenses as “the male employee had better salary negotiating skills.” And it would permit victims to use wage and salary comparisons between employees among different offices in the same county.

The Equal Pay Act needs new muscle in order to fulfill its original promise. Wage and salary inequity has continued long enough. While women have picked up 31 cents in 45 years, at this rate it will take another 29 years to reach parity â€" more than a century after women got the vote.

It’s past time for the Senate to act so that President Obama can sign a bill that opens a new chapter in enforcing the Equal Pay Act and offers new hope that wage inequality will no longer burden women trying to earn a fair day’s pay. And it’s surely way past time for Women’s Equality Day to be celebrated amid real equality.

http://www.forward.com/articles/112910/

Also, keep in mind that the party of "NO" members of our congressional delegation ( John Mica, Ander Crenshaw, Cliff Stearns) voted NO to the recently passed Lilly Ledbetter Act:

Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation




Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for Ms. Ledbetter, fourth from left, an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: January 29, 2009

WASHINGTON â€" President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.”

Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign â€" the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act â€" we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” the president said.

He said was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter â€" who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief â€" but in honor of his own grandmother, “who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again” and for his daughters, “because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.”

The ceremony, and a reception afterward in the State Dining Room of the White House, had a celebratory feel. The East Room was packed with advocates for civil rights and workers rights; the legislators, who included House and Senate leaders and two moderate Republicans â€" Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine â€" shook Mr. Obama’s hand effusively (some, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, received presidential pecks on the cheek) as he took the stage. They looked over his shoulder, practically glowing, as Mr. Obama signed his name to the bill, using one pen for each letter.

“I’ve been practicing signing my name very slowly,” Mr. Obama said wryly, looking at a bank of pens before him. He handed the first pen to the bill’s chief sponsor, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, and the last to Ms. Ledbetter.

The ceremony also marked First Lady Michelle Obama’s policy debut; she spoke afterward in a reception in the State Dining Room, where she called Ms. Ledbetter “one of my favorite people.”

Mr. Obama told Ms. Ledbetter’s story over and over again during his campaign for the White House; she spoke frequently as an advocate for him during his campaign, and made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Now 70, Ms. Ledbetter discovered when she was nearing retirement that her male colleagues were earning much more than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., guilty of pay discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court threw out the case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the date that Goodyear first paid her less than her peers.

Congress tried to pass a law that would have effectively overturned the decision while President George W. Bush was still in office, but the White House opposed the bill; opponents contended it would encourage lawsuits and argued that employees could delay filing their claims in the hope of reaping bigger rewards. But the new Congress passed the bill, which restarts the six-month clock every time the worker receives a paycheck .

Ms. Ledbetter will not see any money as a result of the legislation Mr. Obama signed into law. But what she has gotten, aside from celebrity, is personal satisfaction, as she said in the State Dining Room after the signing ceremony.

“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of,” she said. “In fact, I will never see a cent. But with the president’s signature today I have an even richer reward.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/politics/30ledbetter-web.html

[BridgeTroll]

Could there possibly be other factors at work here besides discrimination?  Seniority?  Time removed from the workforce to raise children? etc...

[buckethead]

Time spent copy pasting.

[Sigma]

buckethead, thanks to you I now have to clean coffee off my computer screen.

[NotNow]

Kind of lumping people together there aren't you Faye?  ALL Republicans?  I was just sharing MY personal experience just like you did.  It is true that there is pay equity in many professions, isn't it?  You are exhibiting exactly the same behaviors that you so quickly criticize others for.

[buckethead]

I am a Republican, yet I find myself in consideral agreement with many of your opinions.

I won't lump you into a group.

[BridgeTroll]

It votes as a group, not just as individuals,

I dont... nor do most people I know from either party.

You are surely not suggesting democrats are a homogeneous, lock step party are you??

[NotNow]

So that reasoning makes Faye's statement, "This seems to be a ritual among Republicans: if they didn't see it, it probably didn't happen." , OK?  Or her assertion that many men like me don't understand what women go through?  And then she offers an opinion piece as her reference?  Really?  Would that mean that ALL Democrats generalize and categorize people?  
And that they have no idea what "reference" means?  Of course not. And that is why she is wrong, and you are wrong to rationalize her statements.

[Sigma]

Well the Republican Party is a group.

It votes as a group, not just as individuals, and can be judged by the record of its votes.

It is appropriate to discuss general political ideas to general political groups.

To suggest otherwise would be disingenuous.

So, we've been accurately associating you with the wack-jobs on the left.  ok. thats your group.

[buckethead]

STephen is not a "whack job".

The sooner we move beyond "group think" the better.

[BridgeTroll]

Why pay the new guys full price?  Let em beg for it, and save that money in the mean time.

Seems to me this is a practicle practice.  I am sure some employers abuse it.

To answer the question though... simply seniority.  Most pay grades for positions have ladders within the paygrade based upon performance and seniority.  If you have been doing a job for 10 years it hardly seems fair that an unproven unknown should get the same pay.  Seniority also tends to lend itself towards loyalty.  If an employee is going to move on shortly after they arrive it is rather silly to pay them the same as the loyal,  high seniority person.

Fayes post also has clearly shown rather dramatic progress towards the mythical equal pay equation... BTW I am 100% in favor of it!  As I said before... there are other factors at work with the apparent discrepancy between the pay rates for men and women.

[Sigma]

STephen is not a "whack job".

The sooner we move beyond "group think" the better.

It was tongue-in-cheek, buckethead. I was trying to make your point.  Shoulda used a winky 

[BridgeTroll]

Discrimination is wrong... but attributing the pay gap solely to discrimination is also wrong.



There appears to be a pay gap between white women and hispanic women.  While this seems unfair there are probably other factors at work here.

For 2008 the U.S. Labor Department reported women's median wages to be 79.9% of men's, while women who have never married earn 94.2% of their unmarried male counterparts' earnings.

I wonder why there is almost no gap for unmarried women???

Women's pay relative to men's rose rapidly from 1980 to 1990 (from 60.2% to 71.6%), and less rapidly from 1990 to 2004 (from 71.6% to 76.5%), though young women have started to outearn young men in some large urban centers with young women earning up to 20% more than their male counterparts [3].

Interesting...

According to a study published in the June, 2008 issue of the American Sociological Review, women can make inroads into male-dominated management ranks as companies scale-back workforces via downsizing. The study shows that firms apparently make an effort to balance gender inequities during staff shakeups. Women entered management ranks at rates up to 25 percent higher than men in some grade levels after downsizing, which created supervisory openings as older male managers took company-offered buyouts. Overall, women accounted for nearly 36 percent of the company’s managers after restructuring, compared with an average of about 24 percent during the period from 1967 to 1993, according to the study.[4]

Seems our current downsizing is working out for women...

Sociologist Reeve Vanneman and his colleagues calculated that if 1990 patterns held, if every labor market in the U.S. had men and women equally distributed across occupations, there would be no gender gap in earnings.

Women and men often make different choices: in college major, in hours and years worked, and in what jobs to take.

I'm sure it could not be this simple...

My point here is not that a wage gap exists... but that there are non-evil forces at work here.  The gap that currently exists is residue from the bad old days of clear cut and obvious discrimination... and a multitude of other factors including the choices women make.

It is not caused by a secret society of fat white male republicans...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%80%93female_income_disparity_in_the_United_States

[Burn to Shine]

Could there possibly be other factors at work here besides discrimination?  Seniority?  Time removed from the workforce to raise children? etc...

Of course, but IME I've done the same exact job - same title - and the pay was considerably different. 

[NotNow]

And like racism, it apparently works both ways.