Monday, January 28, 2008

 

He's back!

State Rep. Mike Turner appeared before a House Budget subcommittee last week to urge passage of the Pay Equity in the Workplace Act. (This is the second time around for Turner and his pay equity legislation, which failed in committee last year.) This is what Big Mike told the subcommittee:

"[T]he national average, women make about 73 cents to a dollar for a man for similar type work."

Last year, Big Mike said women make 76 cents for every dollar a man earns. So, which is it? If I'd been sitting on the Budget subcommittee, that would've been my first question for Big Mike, followed by:

Can you name a single company, corporation, business, firm, enterprise, manufacturing concern, etc. in Tennessee that pays all of its female employees - who have the same education, experience, skills and work habits - a quarter less per hour, on average, to do the same job as their male counterparts?

If it's possible to cut one's labor costs by 25 percent by simply hiring females to do the same job as males, why don't more businesses have workforces comprised entirely of women?

Unfortunately for Big Mike Turner, the Heritage Foundation put a bullet in the belly of the women-don't-get-their-fair-share canard many, many moons ago. Next time he goes braying 'bout gals not gettin' there's, the following needs to be brung out:

"Because the typical woman earns 73 percent of what the typical man earns, [left-wingers] claim that employers are discriminating against women. To fix the problem, [left-wingers] propose the federal government slap heavy fines on offending businesses and make it easier for lawyers to sue them. ...

"There are [several] fundamental problems with [the left-wingers'] approach -- mistakes that illustrate why their plan has nothing to do with 'equal pay for equal work' and why it could actually wreak havoc with the American economy.

"First, [left-wingers are] misinterpreting the data on wages. Male workers and female workers cannot be compared so easily. Men choose higher-paying professions. They have more education, and they tend to be more experienced. Most importantly, they also work more.

"In her recent book, lawyer-turned-journalist Laura Ingraham explains: 'Men take time-outs from employment for less than 2 percent of their working lives, compared to 15 percent for the average working woman. If you suspend and restart your career a lot, you're just not going to have the same pay vector, whether you're a man or a woman. Even full-time women workers typically put in eight to 10 hours a week less than men do.'"

"Second, [left-wingers assume] business owners are so determined to discriminate that they are willing to deliberately sacrifice profits by hiring higher-paid men when they could hire equally capable women for less cost. This is a rather novel theory, particularly coming from [those] who often accuse private businesses of being greedy and profit-driven.

"But, for the sake of argument, let's assume [they're] right: Employers are engaged in a silent conspiracy to forego profits by discriminating. For this bizarre scheme to work, investors have to be in on the plot as well. After all, if there is systematic discrimination, new companies could be started that would undercut existing firms by hiring women to produce the same goods and services for lower cost -- and they would have to be stopped to keep the system working.

"Needless to say, this conspiracy theory is preposterous. Yes, some employers do discriminate in their hiring, and they certainly deserve our scorn, but there's no evidence of an economy-wide plot to oppress female workers." [Emphasis mine]





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