The Paycheck Fairness Act was sunk in the senate under a procedural vote eliminating it from consideration and also eliminating the obligation of senators to consider its merits. I wonder if inept promotion was part of its defeat. A key provision would have prevented companies from punishing workers for revealing salaries and inquiring about them. Without this provision not even egregious salary discrimination can be prosecuted. If you don't know you're being cheated, what can you do about it? No law is enforceable without access to information. You would think everyone could approve of that kind of freedom of information.
Now--I went to a meeting last night with an interesting speaker representing Women on the Job, a project of the Long Island Fund for Women and Girls. I won't attempt to recapitulate the speech--just a couple of nuggets. The gender differential in pay is about 23% in private market jobs and only 11% in public jobs which normally have published, or at least publicly available, pay scales. Gender differences in pay have a racial dimension.. Black women earn 68% and Hispanic women only 60% of what men make while Asian American women earn 92%. Gender pay equity would eliminate 50% of the nation's poverty problem. Finally it has been known that in professions that have had a significant influx of women, salaries and pay decreased for all, but it seems that in fields that have had in increase in men workers such as nursing, salaries risen for all. I will never look at a male nurse the same way again.
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