Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Take Care with What You Wish For ....

To establish my personal belief: every person who does a specific job should be paid the same for their work regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. Equal Pay for Equal Work was a no-brainer, long overdue, and a lay down victory for the Obama administration.
But, could anyone have foreseen the effect that HR 2831 would have on the American workforce during the last 18 months?

In August 2006, it was reported by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), that: "Women’s Employment Falls More Than Men’s In Wake of Hurricanes
IWPR Report Finds Deep Segregation in Gulf Coast Labor Market by Sex and Race". While female workers took the hard hits in 2006 (without the benefit of HR 2831), the same can not be said for our current unemployment rate.
The New York Times (NYT) reports that while layoffs surge, women are surpassing men in the workforce.
How very convenient for corporate policy to see that it is easier to fire all the men than it is to raise the women's salaries to that of their male counterparts.

As an old adage goes, be careful what you wish for, you never know how the universe will conspire to bring it all about.

I sincerely hope that American men won't be expected to be compensated in the future as they were in the past. No, their status as workers has now been lowered to the same as women had held exclusively before Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Yes, men and women alike will now earn the same money for the work they do. And the corporations will have found another loophole in which to leap for shareholder profits.
Never mind that without the worker, there are fewer consumers.

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