Well, it didn't take long. The Republican Party was handed a historic opportunity with women. For the first time since the advent of exit polling data in 1982, women voters favored the GOP in the 2010 election. A rather shocking occurrence given that just two short years ago, President Obama had a 14 point advantage with women. What does the GOP do with this historic opportunity? Blow it!
Wednesday, The Senate voted 58-41 against allowing debate on the Paycheck Fairness Act. Not a single Republican voted "yea." Wise up there GOP -- if you have any hopes of taking the White House in 2012, you'll need women voters. But after shooting down the Paycheck Fairness Act Wednesday and perpetuating a boys' club in Congress, you ain't showing us much.
Here's what we know from the 2010 election: issue #1 for women is economic security. That's why women gave the GOP a once in a generation opportunity to win us over. Absurdly, the Republican Party then turns around and pushes women away by thwarting our financial security. Ya know, us 'wimminz' -- the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.
Is the Paycheck Fairness Act perfect? No. Does it solve the disparity of pay that women face? Not totally. But it is a huge step towards women's financial security. Sadly, here's what the GOP said to women Wednesday: "we don't believe women deserve to make the same wage as men for doing the same job." It's not much more complicated than that. Even if the bill in it's current form (which likely no Republican Senator actually read) wasn't nirvana, then bring it to the floor and hash it out.
There's plenty of blame to go around. And, it's time for some accountability! Here are the recipients of the Paycheck Fairness Act Coward Awards.
1. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) -- after courageously going against their party to vote with the Democrats in February 2009 for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Wednesday Senators Snowe and Collins showed that they care more about their 2012 re-elections than women. Cowards!
2. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) -- after much ballyhoo as a bipartisan leader for women, including voting for the Fair Pay Act and a joint appearance with Secretary Clinton at the Women's History Museum, Senator Hutchinson let us down. Coward!
3. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) -- who also voted for the Fair Pay Act, recently boasted that she will not be beholden to the GOP. She will, however, sell-out women. Standing ovation on the Senate Floor Tuesday - jet set out of town before the vote Wednesday. Coward!
4. Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett (D) (Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls) -- progressive blogger Joanne Bamberger said it best on Facebook: President Obama and his advisor Valerie Jarrett have said time and again they are committed to passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act and it was a priority to them. Wednesday, fair pay failed by 2 votes. They couldn't use their "commitment" to women to get us 2 votes?
It's unclear which offense is worse: not fighting for women or being completely ineffectual as Chair of the White House Council. What is clear: Coward!
5. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- who has buried the Paycheck Fairness Act since its passage in the House in January 2009. Senator Reid failed to use the momentum of the passage of the Fair Pay Act. Fighter for women? You kidding? Coward!
The only ray of light for women in this fiasco is the continued ascension of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, an unabashed and unapologetic advocate for women. After being written off as an 'easy target' in 2010, Senator Gillibrand went on to slay over 30 would-be challengers, and then romp her opponent Joseph DioGuardi 62-36. Senator Gillibrand took the airwaves slamming the Republicans and clearly explaining how their actions Wednesday hurt both women and children:
Can you say: Gillibrand 2016!
As for the cowards, we need to hold them accountable. Even though it was the GOP that blew it this week, there's plenty of blame to go around.
What we do know from the 2010 election is that women's votes are in play. Time will tell which party will seize the opportunity!
Follow Amy Siskind on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AmyTheNewAgenda
The new boys club see women as a use for only one thing.
Do you see any male representatives wearing makeup and high heels and trying to look glam?
(Not in public at least.)
http://www.campidiot.com/ci/viewtopic.php?pid=2771114#p2771114
As a business owner, what I really need right now is to recieve a govt regulation on how much to pay my employees.....do you really think.....That this will solve anything? That this will make the actual hiring of women attractive? That businesses will want to build new factories and bring jobs back with laws like these continuously being forced upon an already over-burdened job base?
It will feel good, but think once.....these types of laws are not what women need, or the country. Ya'll are having a great time labeling this a Dem vs Repub deal, and hoping that bills like these will make women mad at Repubs and ya'll will win some seats back next time.....yadyada. Political posturing at it's worst....
Regulations and laws just inconvenience people. We don't laws or a regulation against killing people or stealing. Those things will correct themselves, because these things are economically undesirable, and the free-unfettered market with eventually weed out those bad behaviors.
On a serious note, jobs are going to other countries, despite the ever increasing freight cost of shipping goods and lack of flexibility inthe supply chain, because of the following:
1) Our unions.
2) Those other countries are willing to invest in building factories there. Their governments are willing to subsidize as much as the entire cost of building the facilities in some cases for US corporations. In the 70s... the IPO of Intel created 100,000 manufacturing jobs in the US. Today, and similar IPO in the US only creates 10,000 manufacturing jobs, and 90,000 manaufacturing jobs elsewhere.
3) Our outsourcing of much of our electronics manufacturing has shifted the valuable supplier relationships, and supply chains to other countries, thus locking us out of manufacturing growth in future technologies such as solar panels etc...
4) Currently China is keeping it's currency artifically low and not float.
And just because another country is willing to screw up it's environment and pollute, doesn't mean that we should allow the same.
The Ledbetter case decision by the courts was about whether or not Ledbetter could file a discrimination claim could be filed after the statue of limitations had expired. It was not about whether or not women should be paid the same as men for the same work, whatever that means. Without reading the legislation I would bet that the law would impose expensive and burdensome regulations on businesses of all sizes. An ideal Democratic bill.
Given that study after study has shown that the major cause for the difference is different career decisions made by women, who are more likely to take breaks in their careers of several years, or to work part time and hen the number of hours worked and the number of years of experience are normalized for, the pay gap nearly vanishes this legislation may not have accomplished anything but creating a huge bureaucracy and a tort lawyer's dream.
Note that Republicans cannot bring legislation to the floor for debate. Only the Majority Leader can do that. The Majority Leader in the Senate is a Democrat, Harry Reid.
I will again post the Novartis decision, because it is a perfect example of what you're talking about.Nevertheless, the jury found that pregnant women and new mothers, among others, were the targets of systematic discrimination and harassment.
"Another manager instructed fellow bosses to put special pressure on saleswomen before they left for maternity leave, because the company's policy was "a good deal" and risked making them "lazy," court papers show.
Human resources publications are talking about the verdict as well. Further infractions were cited by HR Morning:
* One manager's explanation of why he didn’t want to hire young women: "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes flex time and a baby carriage"
* Another manager denied a maternity leave request from a woman who'd just adopted a baby, saying maternity leave was only for women who'd actually given birth, and
* Still another told a woman he didn't think she could do her job because "she was a single mother of three children who was going through a divorce."
A Novartis sales rep was raped by one of her clients, reported it, and was accused of being responsible for it herself, threatened and told to stop contacting HR."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/business/20drug.html
Is that what they said? Or did they say something more along the lines of "We don't believe the federal government has the constitutional authority to insinuate itself into this area, because it's outside the bounds of the federal government's enumerated powers"?
If your boss tells you he'll fire you for sharing your compensation data with other employees we'll let you sue him. He's your employer, not your master. He doesn't get to forbid you from doing this.
And if you happen to find out after sharing data with each other that you are getting screwed, you should go talk to your boss about it and work things out.
If you and your boss can't work things out and you want to seek external arbitration you can try. You already could. You can now actually. You are just kind of screwed now because if your employers demand wage secrecy then you can't tell them how you know you are underpayed without naming names of people who shared wage data which could get them fired ... heck of a thing to do to someone who did you a favor. But now if they go after the person who gave you wage information they can be sued for retaliation.
Basically taking the same rules against non-competitive practices we use everywhere else and applying them to the so called labor market. Maybe even making a real market out of it.
Yet you and your fellow liberals seem to have somehow gotten that all backwards.
Would you like everyone to be Constitutionally guaranteed the same pay as their co-worker, regardless of whether OR NOT one person works harder than the other, or possesses more talent and/or drive and/or initiative and/or skills and/or abilities, etc.? Here's what you do: Get your congressional representatives busy pulling enough votes together to amend the Constitution, or relocate to a country with a government that works that way. Because the United States doesn't, you see. Business owners are actually allowed to decide for themselves who they'd like to pay more to, to reward them for their above-average work, OR to deter them from going to work for a competitor. And workers have the right to work hard and earn an amount of money that they would like to make. Only, if the business owner doesn't agree that said worker is performing and outputting at a level that's deserving of above-average pay, said worker gets to either accept that reality or find another job where his/her work ethic is more appreciated.
http://www.campidiot.com/ci/viewtopic.php?id=463147&p=1
If the Bill re-injects the deeply conflicted concept of comparable worth and fails to seriously address the very real problems of equal pay in a market driven economy, then it is doomed to fail. An incredible effort by professionals over many years failed to develop a magic ruler to compare jobs requiring disparate levels of skill, etc. Many issues not the least of which was marked absences of skill sets in markets and how to respond to these without "rewarding" disparate jobs. I know, I was a committed foot soldier and proponent of that effort. The matter is not settled science and an overly simplistic solution is bound to get trounced. How politicians solved these matters when scientists struggled is the question. Is what they did workable and saleable?
What's to debate about a bill that results in a law that gives the federal government power that it's not constitutionally entitled to possess? Republicans aren't interested in having their representatives waste time like that, if it's all the same to liberals. The motion was defeated. Next!
It's also doomed to fail if it gives the federal government power it isn't constitutionally entitled to. You're gonna be seeing a lot of objections to that, now that the Tea Partiers and their supporters — otherwise known as voters — have shown the Old Guard Republicans what their reelection chances are gonna look like if they don't start delivering for their conservative constituents back home.