Labor

Anyone who thinks the feminist lobby is obsolete hasn't heard about the Equal Pay App Challenge.

The White House recently launched a new competition to create “innovative tools” to help propagate the myth of the wage gap — the notion that women earn only 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.

The challenge is not only to “educate users about the pay gap,” but also to “build tools to promote equal pay.” I have to admit, not all the goals of the competition are bad. In addition to advancing false numbers, the tool should help users through the process of negotiating — a skill, I agree, men do tend to be more naturally inclined toward. But the larger purpose of the challenge is to further the notion that women are a victim class in need of special government protections.

Sunday marks the three-year anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill aimed at improving equality in the workplace. Contrary to what feminists would have you believe, however, protective laws like Lilly Ledbetter actually increase the cost of employing women — especially of childbearing age — by creating the threat of lawsuits and uncertainty.

In honor of this anniversary, perhaps, Working Mother Media and the National Partnership for Women and Families have launched an effort to urge Congress to mandate paid parental leave. As a working mother of three children, I sympathize with the problem; still, the effort is misguided and will ultimately hurt women.

The Washington Examiner reported that Judicial Watch has uncovered internal emails at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that reveal a petty, whiny acting general counsel, who is jealous of the publicity recess-appointed NLRB member Craig Becker has received.
 
The acting general counsel worries that he has not been getting due credit for the NLRB decision to attack Boeing Corp.’s building a second production line in the state of South Carolina, writing, “I didn’t read all of the meltwater articles, but some of the headlines tie Boeing to Craig. Unbelievable.”

The popular narrative today is that there is a “crisis” of women in math and science — or, more accurately, an under-representation of women in these disciplines. So naturally I was drawn to the headline this morning that IBM has named Virginia Rometty the new chief executive of the computer technology company.   

Rometty joins the ranks of a host of other women serving in leadership positions in the computer/technology/Internet world, including Meg Whitman (formerly of eBay) at Hewlett-Packard; Carly Fiorina, formerly of HP; Ursula Burns at Xerox; and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, to name a few.  

I guess Sabrina and I are destined to disagree again, which is perfectly fine, and healthy. This is what makes a democracy a democracy, and this is the kind of healthy debate I wish we could have more of here. I believe that women are subject to substantial discrimination with respect to pay, as are other individuals and groups.

The difference of views between Sabrina and myself would be this: I believe the law itself should be a potent and effective weapon against discrimination. I believe that government action per se, in defense of pay equity, is urgently needed and right. And I believe that "the magic of the marketplace" alone is not enough to protect women or other groups facing pay inequity.

I have to take a minute to respond to Brent Budowsky’s post, "GOP war against women." For starters, the notion that a political party is literally fighting against 50 percent of the population is absurd and should be reserved for radical TV hosts like Thom Hartmann, who uses that phrase regularly.

Brent asks why “conservative Republican women support positions so hostile to the economic interests of American women.” Well, in a recent Pundits Blog post, I addressed many of the issues I suspect Brent is referring to, including education, the wage gap and workplace discrimination.

But let me address the issue of workplace discrimination, since Brent was responding to my post about the Wal-Mart discrimination case.

On Dec. 5, 2010, USA Today quoted President Obama as urging congressional approval of the trade deal with South Korea by saying, "We have to do more to accelerate the economic recovery and create jobs for the millions of Americans who are still looking for work."

One problem: It is now June 8, 2011, and the South Korea trade deal has not even been submitted by President Obama to Congress.

That’s December, January, February, March, April, May and now June — six full months — half a year — since Obama made his bold statement. For some reason, the president has not gotten around to sending the agreement to the U.S. Senate for approval.

The clock is ticking on a little-known but extremely important recess appointment by President Obama, that of Republican Victoria Lipnic as a commissioner to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

While other recess appointments to the EEOC don’t expire until December 2011, Lipnic was the sole Republican to be recessed, but her term was limited to the end of 2010. Failure to confirm Lipnic would be a huge mistake by this lame-duck Senate.

After losing the women’s vote in November, the White House and congressional Democrats will be watching the Supreme Court closely next spring when it hears an appeal by Wal-Mart in a class-action employment-discrimination case.

The issue at stake is not about gender-discrimination; rather, the focus is whether or not the case can move forward based on the commonality of the class. While two lower courts — most recently the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco — ruled that the case could go forward, the dissenting opinions raised some serious concerns about why it should not.

Most readers know that Lilly Ledbetter is the woman whose courageous battle has led to progress, though not enough progress, for women receiving equal pay for equal work. Recently, Ledbetter stood side by side with one of her greatest supporters when she endorsed Sen. Harry Reid (D) for reelection in Nevada.

Lilly Ledbetter is the Good Lord's answer to Sharron Angle, who taunts Reid with her call to "man up.” What Lilly Ledbetter knows and Sharron Angle will never learn is that a real man stands tall, as Harry Reid has stood tall for a lifetime, to fight for every woman in Nevada and every woman in America receiving an honest day's pay for an honest day's work.