Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Dem Ohio Senators call for fair pay while ignoring unfair pay in their own party


You can file this under "hypocrisy in governemt" ...

Sen. Charleta Tavares (D-Columbus) and Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) on Monday called on the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that seeks to equalize pay between men and women.

These state senators want the Paycheck Fairness Act, otherwise known as the No Privacy in my Paycheck Act, to be passed. It's primary impact would be to make it easier for women to sue their employers for wage disparity, even though the causes of such alleged wage disparity have little to do with discrimination.

Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says the statistics on pay equity are politicized and do not consider all factors.

“An analysis of more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, commissioned by the Labor Department, found that the so-called wage gap is mostly, and perhaps entirely, an artifact of the different choices men and women make -- different fields of study, different professions, different balances between home and work,” Sommers wrote.

“A core provision would encourage class-action lawsuits and force defendants to settle under threat of uncapped punitive damages,” said Sommers. “Employers would be liable not only for intentional discrimination (banned long ago) but for the ‘lingering effects of past discrimination.’ What does that mean? Employers have no idea.”

But that's not the worst of it.

Senate Democrats who are pushing this bill actually pay their female staffers less than they pay their male staffers.

I guess it's true that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

No - I'm not making this up. The Washington Free Beacon has the details:

A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.

Of the five senators who participated in Wednesday’s press conference—Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), Patty Murray (D., Wash.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.)—three pay their female staff members significantly less than male staffers.

Murray, who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war a women,” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a difference of 35.2 percent.

That is well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate. However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported, when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.

A significant “gender gap” exists in Feinstein’s office, where women also made about $21,000 less than men in 2011, but the percentage difference—41 percent—was even higher than Murray’s.

Boxer’s female staffers made about $5,000 less, a difference of 7.3 percent
.

You really need to read the entire article to see just how bad some of the discrepancies are, and then you'll realize the extreme hypocrisy that is being shown by the Democrats. How much do you want to bet that their proposed bill won't apply to Congress?

And they have the unmitigated gall to talk about a so-called Republican 'war on women.'

But back to Ohio and Senators Tavares and Turner.

"I applaud President Obama for standing up for equal pay for equal work. In 2012, it is unconscionable that a pay gap between women and men persists." ~ Sen. Turner

"We have pay discrimination against women which impacts their quality of life and that of their families. This in turn negatively impacts our economy." ~ Sen. Tavares

Really? So you think your fellow Democrats in the Senate are unconscionable and hurting the economy? I'm certain others will agree with that, but it's not what they mean, though it is the only logical conclusion.

Tavares, Turner and the rest of the Democrats should fix their own pay discrimination first and forget about aiding the trial lawyers lobby for an election-year stunt.

Anything less is "unconscionable."

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