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When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

theatlantic.com

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Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#121

Post by kaitai »

crazy1van wrote: post #24

This article seems to basically say its already illegal to prohibit employees from discussing pay (NLRA 1935) and it is certainly illegal to pay someone less based on race or sex (Equal Pay Act, and others) but the solution to wage discrimination is pass more laws that make it illegal-er. I have a hard time buying this argument. If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for…

It's not despicable.

As a woman, I'll repeat: paying women less for being women is not despicable.

That doesn't mean it's good. It's bad. But it's normal and there are a lot of social forces at work. Good, well-meaning people have all sorts of logical reasons to pay women or minorities or handicapped people less. You don't have to be evil to participate in a sucky system. We all do, even the virtuous ones. So, open your eyes and work to change things.

As long as we frame bias as something only despicable people have, we will not be able to change anything. After all, we're not despicable, so we can't be biased! Yay. False. Bias is something good people are still steeped in. It's how humans operate.

Transparency in pay is a way in which good people can be confronted by their bias. In any one situation, you can argue that a woman deserves less (rationally and justly -- just change the rules for evaluation so she loses [1]). If via transparency and use of data you notice that women are consistently paid less, and that your evaluation criteria keep changing, you can realize your implicit bias and change your actions.

[1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9120783 .

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#122

Post by forgotpasswd3x »

kaitai wrote: post #121
crazy1van wrote: post #24

This article seems to basically say its already illegal to prohibit employees from discussing pay (NLRA 1935) and it is certainly illegal to pay someone less based on race or sex (Equal Pay Act, and others) but the solution to wage discrimination is pass more laws that make it illegal-er. I have a hard time buying this argument. If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for…

It's not despicable. As a woman, I'll repeat: paying women less for being women is not despicable. That doesn't mean it's good. It's bad. But it's normal and there are a lot of social forces at work. Good, well-meaning people have all sorts of logical reasons to pay women or minorities or handicapped people less. You don't have to be evil to participate in a sucky system. We all do, even the virtuous ones. So, open y…

Could you give an example where a good, well-meaning person would have a logical reason to pay a minority less?

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#123

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

tbrownaw wrote: post #96
wyager wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If women are actually, objectively, less productive workers (if your explanation is correct), why is it wrong for companies to pay them less?

How do you objectively measure the productivity of a programmer? Or of a secretary / office assistant / whatever they're called these days (the person who's job is to make life easier for other people, so that said other people can get more of their own work done)? If it was possible to objectively measure productivity, there wouldn't be any of these huge arguments about pay fairness.

You don't.

You assume that, innate talents being equal, women are equal to men in terms of productivity. I mean, this is the stated intention of the Feminist movement in a nutshell, yes?

And then you take a look at the other stats (as I mentioned, females take more leave. And females are more likely to have a child and stop working [1]. And there are the liability issues, ironically caused by the Feminist movement.)

And so - equal productivity, but less hours for the amount of money you pay. It's a simple calculation, with the result that, if the above assumptions are true, women should, from an economic point of view, be paid less than men on average.

At which point, if you are still arguing that wage should be equal from economic terms, you've gone beyond saying women are equal to men and saying that women are better then men - and that is an entirely different ball of wax.

[1] http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/.3ndic.1t.4r@-eng.jsp?iid=13#M_7

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#124

Post by zirok »

wereHamster wrote: post #110
charlesdm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. The potential upside of doing this doesn't warrant the massive downside. Before you know it, you'll be getting bombarded with advertisements. Besides, in the EU, a society where the average person hates it when someone who is not him is doing well, I'd rather people not know how much I earn.

> EU [...] a society Don't generalize. The EU has 28 member states, with diverse cultures and social norms. What works in Norway may not work in the southern Italy.

Norway is not a member state of the EU. It has close ties with the EU, but it is not part of the EU.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#126

Post by aklemm »

wyager wrote: post #50
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an issue with maternity leave. Maternity leave means that women effectively cost more than men for the same amount of work, in the long run and on average. This can be mitigated by laws, but cannot be eliminated without addressing the underlying social issues. And no, mandatory paternity leave doesn't eliminate it, as there are more single mothers than single fathers. The logic is simple. Companies survi…

If women are actually, objectively, less productive workers (if your explanation is correct), why is it wrong for companies to pay them less?

If maternity leave really is a large cost, then the reason not to pay them less is because we all have a stake in the healthy propagation of the species. Women bare the children, but that doesn't mean they ought to bare the entire burden of it.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#127

Post by [deleted] »

uxp wrote: post #95
smm2000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

Here's a heavily sourced study that found that Utah women are paid about 69 cents for every dollar a man in Utah makes: http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/wf.epd.fact... It's not a national study, no, and Utah has been cited as being one of the top 5 states in the gender pay gap so this is admittedly higher than many other states. It also states that this gap remains at about the same amount (66 to 72 c…

[deleted]

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#128

Post by tghw »

uxp wrote: post #95
smm2000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

Here's a heavily sourced study that found that Utah women are paid about 69 cents for every dollar a man in Utah makes: http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/wf.epd.fact... It's not a national study, no, and Utah has been cited as being one of the top 5 states in the gender pay gap so this is admittedly higher than many other states. It also states that this gap remains at about the same amount (66 to 72 c…

I don't believe that study is well controlled. In fact, some of the claims are either contradictory or just don't make sense.

A 2009 study sponsored by the US Department of Labor, which analysed about 50 studies on the gender pay gap, concluded that "The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

There are observable differences in the attributes of men and women that account for most of the wage gap. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for between 65.1 and 76.4 percent of a raw gender wage gap of 20.4 percent, and thereby leave an adjusted gender wage gap that is between 4.8 and 7.1 percent.[1]

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#129

Post by Marazan »

smm2000 wrote: post #69
ordinary wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior. Women don't earn about 18% less than men (OECD median, 2008)[0] because a small minority of employers pay women almost nothing, but because the vast majority of employers pay women (or blacks, or handicapped people) slightly less. Just like laws th…

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

You say that like 2-3% is not completely fucking outrageous.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#130

Post by jiggy2011 »

aklemm wrote: post #126
wyager wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If women are actually, objectively, less productive workers (if your explanation is correct), why is it wrong for companies to pay them less?

If maternity leave really is a large cost, then the reason not to pay them less is because we all have a stake in the healthy propagation of the species. Women bare the children, but that doesn't mean they ought to bare the entire burden of it.

It also requires a man to make a child, so isn't it reasonable to expect the father to pay rather than the employer?
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