Equal pay for women – the next battle in the war on women.

If two people, one a woman, one a man do a job and all things being considered are equal in their work, should they be paid the same? Of course they should, there is no question about that. And I am betting that the overwhelming number of employers agree with that and act accordingly (because if they don’t they will invite an EEOC complaint and let me tell you from experience, you don’t want that hassle, let alone the consequences). Besides, equal pay for equal work has been the law for three decades.

However, the matter is not that simple.

✔️ Let’s say you have a job opening for an entry-level manager and you will be hiring two recent college graduates. Should both the man and woman start at exactly the same pay? What if one candidate has three years of intern experience, the other none? Still equal pay to start? What if one was a top-level graduate, and the other a mediocre student, is that relevant?

But it gets more complicated than that.

✔️ Let’s say there is an existing job filled by two men who each have ten years of experience and make $50,000 a year. The employer is adding one additional position doing the same job. An external candidate, a woman, applies for the job and is fully qualified. Her current salary is $35,000 with another employer. Should she automatically receive a $15,000 raise, a 43% increase? What if she happily accepts a starting salary of $45,000, is the employer discriminating? What if someone looks at the three salaries a year later and asks why the woman is making 90% of the men’s salary?

✔️ Now, take the same situation only the woman is an internal candidate, she already works for the employer in a different position, but earns $30,000. She has ten years of service with the company in unrelated jobs. If the employer’s policy is that a promotion is initially limited to a 10% raise, is the woman being discriminated against because she earns less than the men?

✔️ Assume a man and woman are doing the same job with the same salary. A year later it’s bonus and performance review time. The man, based on his job performance, receives a 5% raise and a bonus of $5,000. The woman receives only a 3% raise and a $2,000 bonus, again based on her performance. Is this discrimination now that they are not being paid the same? What if the increases were reversed, is the man being discriminated against?

Even the White House acknowledges variations in pay based on some of the above factors. However, they aren’t taken into consideration when the 77% equal pay populist rhetoric is thrown around or when the EEOC comes knocking on the employers’ door and looks not at the details, facts and figures, but only the macro level results.

✔️ In union jobs anyone, man or woman, doing the same job will receive the same hourly rate. But based on hours worked or overtime accepted, the weekly pay may be significantly different. Is that an equal pay issue? The difference shows up in weekly wage numbers.

Outright discrimination in pay practices should not be tolerated. That is for certain, but the hypocritical rhetoric coming from the administration is also intolerable and is nothing more than seeking to stir up an election year issue appealing to the Democratic base which includes young and working women.

There are many reasons women earn 77% or 88% of what men earn; some legitimate, some not, but you can’t make any valid determination of which is which by throwing around gross percentages. This is not unlike, dare I say it, “free” contraceptives.

If you simply say nothing matters except the end result being equal pay in a job, you are also saying everyone in every job should earn the same regardless of anything other than job title. I don’t think so.

For another point of view on all this read this article which I discovered after writing this post.