Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 17:18:20 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: Candy Madigan <candymadigan at mindspring.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: equal pay
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

At 09:27 AM 04/04/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>It would arguably be irrational to pay people unequally based purely on
>gender, if all else is equal, and if gender were not itself relevant to
>the job.  But if productivity differs from worker to worker, that could
>be a rational basis for unequal pay for the same job.  Trying to ban
>irrational behavior begs the moral question of whether people have the
>right to be a bit irrational with their own resources, and raises the
>practical objection that opinions and perceptions about what is rational
>and fair may honestly differ.
>
>Sir, you are begging the question.  If it were done on a case-by-case basis,
>there would not be any problem - but it is NOT.  The practices described are
>real - otherwise the employment commission would not be in business.  There
>is strong historical evidence of deliberate refusal to pay people for equal
>work if they are female.  This is fact, not theory.
>Most jobs, as you suggest, are not well-suited to being paid on
>commission, piecework, or by tips, so the employer is left to estimate
>productivity and quality of work.  Employment should be a voluntary
>relationship.  The employee is selling labor, and the employer is buying
>labor.  The terms of the transaction should be freely negotiable.  Both
>the employer and the employee should be free to agree to mutually
>acceptable terms.
>
>And I can tell that you have no kids to support - for I have been in
>positions where I had no choice - accept this temporarily with a lower wage,
>or let my kid go hungry.  This is not an unusual dilemmas for people with
>families who MUST take what they can get.  You think those Untouchables in
>India ENJOY cleaning out latrines with their hands?
>
>I don't see the U.S. as being chock full of employers scheming to pay
>women workers less than the men, but such an employer would be making a
>bad business decision, in part because it would bad for morale.  As I
>understand economics, wages in a free market tend to be set by the forces
>of supply and demand, and employers who insist on making irrational wage
>offers are working against their own economic success.
>
>Again, sir, you know not whereof you speak.  You don't see it because you
>have no need to.  Women KNOW this goes on.  How?  We EXPERIENCE it -
>something that you have never done.
>

I had Lee's point brought home to me while I was at the NCO Academy a
couple of years ago.

The class consisted of 15 people, about half black and half white, I
happened to be the only female.

The instructor (for this block, a black man) came in and did a demonstration.

He was our supervisor with the power to place people in jobs from which
they were guaranteed promotion.  As he picked out people in the room and
successively placed them in that job, I noticed that everyone was a
man.  Since there was only me in the room as a woman, it was not
immediately apparent.  The white men in the class didn't notice
anything.  The black men all noticed that the only people being picked were
black.  I had not noticed the skin color, I had noticed the sex, because
that is the kind of discrimination that I have experienced.  The white men
didn't notice anything, because they had not experienced discrimination.

If you have not experienced something, it is not real to you.

Candy