Nick Beach
POLS-304
18 September 2019
Equal
Pay for Equal Work
In
today’s working world it may not matter how hard you work, how equal your work
is to your co-workers or hell even if you are doing better work than your
co-worker, you may still be paid less.
Does this sound wrong to many of you? Well it should, and as a matter of
fact it is. Today, this is a sad truth and reality for many women living in
America. This naturally arises the
question of, what is our government doing about this?
In
2014, the U.S. Senate blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act. This act would have made it illegal for
employers to pay unequal wage gaps to men and women who are performing the same
work. Now before all of that, the equal
pay act was passed as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act in
1963. This prohibited discrimination on
account of sex in the payment of wages by employers. The problem with this law is the very high
burden one (a woman) must meet to prove that there discrimination going
on. In order to win this case she or he
I suppose would have to establish a prima facie case of gender based wage
discrimination under the EPA. They would
have to show different wages are paid to employees of the opposite sex who work
in jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and
are performed under similar working conditions in the same establishment. A major catch to this is in the same
establishment, even if it is with the same company in the same state just
simply different buildings it would not qualify as such. Furthermore in order for the employee to win
he would just have to prove one of the statutes that allow unequal pay for
equal work.
Today,
the Paycheck Fairness Act amendment would; prohibit employers from using salary
history (this ensures salaries are not based on prior pay disparities), protect
against retaliation for discussing pay with colleagues, ensure equal pay for
equal work, equalize discrimination claims based on gender, race, and
ethnicity, Support employers and employees to achieve fair pay practices.
Below shows a graph of Women’s median usual weekly earning as a percent
of men’s earning in the 2nd quarter of 2019 averages.
Source: U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics
With there being a
clear problem that needs addressing this leads us with the question of what can
we do about the gender pay gap?
Well according to Siri Chilazi, a
research fellow at the women and policy program at Harvard John F. Kennedy
School of Government, “Pay fairness is a moral issue, but it is also an
economic issue.” She continues to further say the current gap is commonly
described as 20 percent. One possible
solution to this issue would be for employers to be required to share their
gender gap data with the federal government in order to hold companies
accountable. Another solution could be
for employers to use audits for the gaps after publicly disclosing them.
This
brings together the point that this issue is going to be a difficult one to
solve however, one we all need to work together one. Professor Hitt brought up an interesting
point in class on September 18th, that being paternity leave. Not only does this press the question of
equality but it brings up a very interesting point on the separation of men and
women. With that I will leave you all
with the question of whether or not in today’s society women are fully being
treated as equals?
Hi Nick! Good job on your blog post! You have brought up some really interesting points. As a women, I think this issue is important to myself and the other 50 or so percent of US women! I think the current process seems extremely rigorous to prove this gender pay gap, which to some may or may not be a good thing. But either way it's important for lawmakers to represent their constituents and if they want the Paycheck Fairness Act to be passed then lawmakers should respect that.
ReplyDeleteNick, I found your in depth description of the Paycheck Fairness Act very interesting. In terms of addressing gender pay gap, I personally think having companies report their gender pay gap to the federal government would be very controversial. It has the right intention, but I would not be surprised to see such action abused. It could be very easy for companies to mislead reports and ,therefore, create a new set of issues.
ReplyDeleteNick, very interesting topic and very well written. You can tell in the tone of the paper that this is something you have a personal connection too and actually care about. I myself am not as educated in the field of equal pay as I would like to be or should be, so reading this blog was very intriguing. I really liked how you focused more on the legislative piece than the actual data behind the gap. Of course seeing the data behind this topic would be moving, but I feel as if people are less educated on the actual legislation that is allowing for the pay gap to occur, and with that, what legislation could be passed to help diminish the gap that was not passed. Thank you for educating me a little bit further regarding this topic!
ReplyDelete