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Main Paineframe posted:It's not a separate issue at all, because the employee has to prove that the pay difference is because they're women and not for other reasons such as differences in skill, effort, responsibility, merit, output quality or quantity, or any other factor besides gender. Technically it's the employer's responsibility to prove this, but it's easier for them to make a case for it than it is for the employee to debunk that case - especially if the subject of debate is widened to all women's salaries at the company rather than just one. And since the Supreme Court has smacked down class action pay discrimination cases, each and every female employee has to sue separately for their particular case of pay discrimination. Making the data available in and of itself makes the situation easier to fix. It may not fix it by itself, but it's a significant improvement.
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Apr 18, 2014 21:43
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 05:59 |
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Main Paineframe posted:I don't believe it's a bad thing...but I don't believe it's a solution either. The thing about appealing to market efficiency is that the free market is well-known to be absolute garbage at dealing with discrimination, and I'm not really sure I even necessarily agree that labor should strive to be an efficient free market in the first place (ideological reasons, mostly). Frankly, I'm more than a little bit stunned that the prevailing opinion seems to be "if we just make the markets free and efficient and unregulated enough, the invisible hand will solve discrimination for us" or "if it were just a little easier to sue, the threat of legal action would cause the invisible hand to end discrimination". I believe that far more drastic action is needed to genuinely combat pay discrimination. Public pay data would help some people, but at best it'd just narrow the pay gap, not erase it. I'm not against public pay data itself, I'm against treating it like a comprehensive solution when it's really just a weak half-measure. It's not about appealing to market efficiency, it's about making people aware that it's a problem in the first place. Once people understand how they're directly being harmed, then you can more successfully advocate for regulatory solutions, the same solutions you seem to agree with. Any sort of "market efficiency" solutions that might happen because of this (lawsuits, etc) just make knowledge of the problem more widespread.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:23
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:Didn't we used to have public work houses? What happened to that? Are you loving kidding me? shrike82 posted:Pay disclosure is ultimately an uninteresting solution because it's not a solution in of itself and because it has no natural constituency. mugrim posted:I don't believe anyone said it was a comprehensive solution. It's information gathering that can then allow civil suits to be presented in far greater numbers. It's impossible to fix a problem if you don't know about it, and it's pretty hard to fix being undercut if you don't even know it's happening. This would be a dream for labor lawyers, especially considering how drastically different pay for the same job can be in a workplace that enforces those policies. Come on shrike, this post was just a few below yours, why didn't you read it and take it into consideration?
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Apr 29, 2014 14:32
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:Oh... I didn't mean work-house. I meant public works. You mean like the WPA and AmeriCorps? Yeah, those would be a huge help if they were well funded and weren't treated like welfare programs by assholes.
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Apr 29, 2014 15:31
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So is it fair to call the firing of Jill Abramson an issue where transparency in pay would have significantly helped things, or is it too soon to tell? Vox has a rundown of articles if you are new to the situation. Here's more from Poynter. Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 17:04 on May 16, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 17:01
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wateroverfire posted:Seems sort of unlikely. The whole situation seems like a mess. Why do you say unlikely? Most of what I've been reading about the topic points to the assertion that over the past decade Abramson was paid less than her male coworkers in similar positions while still performing well, while also pointing out that she had very recently discussed this issue with the board. I'm sure there are details that are wrong or incomplete (since we'll never know for sure), but it seems to me that the NY Times was taking advantage of institutional opaqueness to pay her less money than her male peers, and got kicked out for daring to confront her employer about it. Is there something I'm missing here?
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May 16, 2014 20:01
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Main Paineframe posted:Pay transparency had nothing to do with it. She already knew about the pay disparity (with enough detail that she wasn't fooled even when they gave her a token raise that didn't actually close the gap), apparently confronted senior management about it on several different occasions, and even got a lawyer involved. The problem was that, even with the exact size of the pay disparity known to her and an obvious lawsuit brewing on the horizon, the NYT still decided they'd rather shitcan her than actually close the pay gap. I was under the impression that the lawyer issue/challenge to the board was quite recent, did I overlook something or get my timeline confused? My current understanding of the issue is that she found out, she lawyered up/talked to the board then she was out the door.
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May 16, 2014 20:53
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