Republicans block 'Paycheck Fairness Act'

[Beany]

Thanks for the visual aid!

[Yamato]

Should women and men have to pay for a Paycheck Fairness Act for Native Americans, or just men?

[Beany]

Should women and men have to pay for a Paycheck Fairness Act for Native Americans, or just men?

I'm not understanding why aboriginal people have been introduced into the topic of gender discrimination. Minority discrimination is a whole different topic.

[Harte]

What about Native American women? Don't care about those?

Double whammy?

Harte

[Beany]

What about Native American women? Don't care about those?

Double whammy?

Harte

It's not an ethnic issue, it's a gender & economic issue. Why is anyone singling out Native American women. As women, they would benefit from paycheck fairness.

[Harte]

I see. Then Native American women are not subject to any further discriminatory practices than are women of any other group.

Harte

[sam12six]

The answer to your first question is yes, men in male-dominated positions, including janitors, -progressed more quickly in regard to wages & career ladder, i.e. went from Job Title I to Job Title VIII, with benchmark positions being in the upper ranges, whereas the benchmark positions for female-dominated jobs were all in the mid to low range, with a smaller range of job titles. For instance, in the welfare department, there were no Case Worker IV & higher positions at all, and the benchmark was Case Worker II.

Does this answer your questions? As you probably know by now, this is a much more complicated issue than can readily be explained in sound bytes, or that can be understood in just a few minutes. Do you think it would be awful if, say, the county extended the career range for case workers so that it matched that of janitors or greens keepers? Is that the same as equal pay for equal work, do you think, giving women the same opportunities as men to advance up the career ladder without even worrying about job descriptions? Because really, that alone would solve a lot of problems.

It really doesn't answer my question. The question was: Did your study find that men with the same job advanced more quickly up the pay scale than women with that job?

What you're saying is, again, two completely different jobs have different rates of pay increase. You're then saying that since the slower rate jobs tend to attract more women and the faster jobs more men - Boom! Gender Discrimination!

There are other possible reasons for the quicker advancement of some jobs. If one job has more pleasant work conditions, maybe there's less turnover with the stagnant wages. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's definitely no gender discrimination going on there, just that unless men are advancing at a faster rate within the same job there's no way to definitely point at that as the reason. There may be a gender bias in that men are probably more likely to look for another job if they aren't given better pay in a timely manner, but accommodating that is no more discrimination (in the context of this thread) than saying women prefer free snacks in the break room so the department in question provides them in the woman-heavy areas.

I know you'll disagree with the statement, but I believe ranking job import as you've done for your study is always going to be somewhat arbitrary and biased in whatever direction those putting together the project lean. You could make the same argument that since most farm harvest workers (male dominated) make far less than nurses (female dominated), that it's discrimination against men and we need a law to ensure that migrant workers are paid as much as an RN because providing food to live on is every bit as important as caring for sick and injured people. The bias would just be in the opposite direction (and no more silly to someone not actually involved in the study).

My point is, like it or not, the study is comparing apples to oranges. Setting up arbitrary rules that state the two are the same thing because they are similar in size and both are somewhat spherical does not, to most people without an agenda, indicate that frivolous legislation (making it easier to win fruit related lawsuits) is a good thing.

[Yamato]

I'm not understanding why aboriginal people have been introduced into the topic of gender discrimination. Minority discrimination is a whole different topic.

The topic here is paycheck discrimination Beany, and I asked a hypothetical question about it regarding the poorest socioeconomic group in the country. Why is the "Paycheck Fairness Act" really about gender discrimination? Call it what it is, if that's what it is. Would that I started a new topic about paycheck discrimination for native Americans, would you participate in that discussion and would the law have to be written any differently? If you can't think of any difference, why aren't they included here? There's a lot more targets of discrimination in our society we can apply bureaucratic bandaids to. Do you support them all by blanket default, or do how these bills get written factor in somehow? Maybe if the bill was more inclusive to everyone suffering from paycheck discrimination it wouldn't be called off-topic the moment I ask one to entertain a hypothetical example of the exact same behavior but without gender attached.

[Beany]

I see. Then Native American women are not subject to any further discriminatory practices than are women of any other group.

Harte

The topic is the pay check fairness act, not discrimination against people of color. If you'd like to discuss discrimination against aboriginal women, think about posting it as a new topic. It doesn't belong in this discussion.

[Beany]

It really doesn't answer my question. The question was: Did your study find that men with the same job advanced more quickly up the pay scale than women with that job?

What you're saying is, again, two completely different jobs have different rates of pay increase. You're then saying that since the slower rate jobs tend to attract more women and the faster jobs more men - Boom! Gender Discrimination!

There are other possible reasons for the quicker advancement of some jobs. If one job has more pleasant work conditions, maybe there's less turnover with the stagnant wages. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's definitely no gender discrimination going on there, just that unless men are advancing at a faster rate within the same job there's no way to definitely point at that as the reason. There may be a gender bias in that men are probably more likely to look for another job if they aren't given better pay in a timely manner, but accommodating that is no more discrimination (in the context of this thread) than saying women prefer free snacks in the break room so the department in question provides them in the woman-heavy areas.

I know you'll disagree with the statement, but I believe ranking job import as you've done for your study is always going to be somewhat arbitrary and biased in whatever direction those putting together the project lean. You could make the same argument that since most farm harvest workers (male dominated) make far less than nurses (female dominated), that it's discrimination against men and we need a law to ensure that migrant workers are paid as much as an RN because providing food to live on is every bit as important as caring for sick and injured people. The bias would just be in the opposite direction (and no more silly to someone not actually involved in the study).

My point is, like it or not, the study is comparing apples to oranges. Setting up arbitrary rules that state the two are the same thing because they are similar in size and both are somewhat spherical does not, to most people without an agenda, indicate that frivolous legislation (making it easier to win fruit related lawsuits) is a good thing.

We didn't focus on whether men moved up faster than women, it would have doubled our work. While you feel the study compares apples and oranges, the courts don't agree. By the way, you can compare apples & oranges. Which one if the ripest? Which one is the freshest? Was one of them grown & harvested locally? Does one appear to have blemishes? What's the price point? Was the apple in cold storage for months & the orange fresh? Is the orange a Valencia, which isn't your favorite variety, while the apply is a Jonalicious, which you know to be currently in season and sweet & juicy? How do you plan on using the fruit? Would one be a better ingredient for the recipe than the other? Is one organic and pesticide free and other not?

I see you're not a fan of comparable worth, which is fine. We're all entitled to our opinions.

[sam12six]

We didn't focus on whether men moved up faster than women, it would have doubled our work. While you feel the study compares apples and oranges, the courts don't agree. By the way, you can compare apples & oranges. Which one if the ripest? Which one is the freshest? Was one of them grown & harvested locally? Does one appear to have blemishes? What's the price point? Was the apple in cold storage for months & the orange fresh? Is the orange a Valencia, which isn't your favorite variety, while the apply is a Jonalicious, which you know to be currently in season and sweet & juicy? How do you plan on using the fruit? Would one be a better ingredient for the recipe than the other? Is one organic and pesticide free and other not?

You can certainly compare all those aspects of two different things and more. What you can't do is compare them then conclude that they are equal to the point of being the same.

I see you're not a fan of comparable worth, which is fine. We're all entitled to our opinions.

When comparing jobs, some are easy. It is simple to judge the worth of a salesman by how many sales are made. Likewise, a production worker who assembles widgets can be judged simply by counting. For a worker whose job is just a cog in the machine without a direct impact on profit or loss, there is no objective way to do so. Bias is automatically assigned when you give each aspect included in your comparison a value.

If I think a college degree is just a piece of paper to please bureaucrats, chances are, I'll assign a very low value to educational requirements compared to someone who thinks higher education is the key to productivity. On the other hand, if I believe any able bodied person more intelligent than a chimpanzee can perform maintenance tasks, chances are good that I will undervalue the physical labor aspect of a maintenance job.

The bottom line is, and yes, this is purely my opinion, unless you can prove men in the same positions are systemically paid better than women, you have not proven gender discrimination. Even if you do find such a dichotomy, though, it still doesn't mean passing a law to make already easy to win lawsuits (easy to win if there's merit) even easier to win with bigger payoffs is a good action based on the discrimination found.

What your study has shown is that being a gardener is a better choice than being a caseworker if the most important point of your 5 year career plan is the paycheck. Even if you extrapolate from that fact the idea that boy jobs are better paid than girl jobs, I don't see why making class action lawsuits bigger and easier to win strikes you as a way to fix things.

From surveys I've seen throughout the years, women place emphasis on intangibles when it comes to their jobs. Pleasant work environment, flexible hours, this sort of thing always ranks highly. With men, the top 2 factors are pretty much always pay amount and advancement potential. It should be no surprise that your study shows that the city's advancement scheme is affected by this difference in priority among its employees.

Let me ask you this: Do you think the decision makers who control rates of advancement are literally saying, "We need to advance gardeners faster than caseworkers because they're mostly men and that plumbing is just superior to female plumbing.", or do you think it is more likely that, over time, they discovered that gardeners would quit and move on if wages stagnated and that caseworkers would stick around in spite of the stagnant wages? The reason I ask is because any manager, corporate or municipal, I've encountered would never pay a position that is more than necessary to keep competent staff in place, much less do so for such an inane reason as what's in their pants.