Equal Pay For Equal Work

Equal Pay For Equal Work:

Employers’ continuous engagement in pay inequality in the absence of ideal accountability is an on going challenge…

It is not about the cold and hard statistics but the way to find solution to wage inequality.

This needs certain remarkable changes on a wide scale. The first change is cultural; that is, there is a need to change the notion that there should be different payment for the same work according to gender. It is not just about agreeing that there is a problem; we must take necessary actions to make the shifts a reality. It is for the benefit our nation to give women equal pay for the same work. When women are given equal pay, it means the economy will favor them and people around them because of the better wages.

According to the report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) that there is improvement in our nation’s gross Gross Domestic Product (GDP) when everyone is given equal pay for the same work. Women who are head of homes in this country are about 44%. Women also make the majority of household decisions like the kind of product to buy as well as the quantity. Even some are breadwinners of the family. The argument is that making more money will help us spend more.

There will be a reduction in poverty due to the economic effects. This is corroborated by the National Women’s Law Center, that there will be over half reduction in poverty among working women and their household when there is equal pay. Likewise, there will be the addition of $513 billion to the national economy.

Women are affected by payment inequality even before they start working. There is no even playing field for women presently as they need to use smart tactics to engage employers when seeking for a position and during salary negotiation. Salary information for every position ia available from the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau. The request of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from companies is the report on the salaries paid to their employees based on race and gender; to ensure that companies are transparent when it comes to compensation practices and help to eliminate the payment disparity and hold them responsible. The absence of data will not make it easy to ensure equal payment to women. 

It is necessary to make equal pay resonate with people deeply just as seen in recent times with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements against sexual violence, or the #NeverAgain movement for gun reforms. The cultural change required must go deep in to the society and deal with social and economic inequities.

During the time of President Obama, there was Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order aimed at ensuring that companies with federal contracts comply with 14 labor and civil rights laws. However, just last week, an order was signed by President Trump to revoke it. The Fair Pay order was due to the discovery of the award of millions in federal to companies characterized by widespread violations. They should not have been given such contracts because they violate the fair labor laws.

The two major factors that influence this include enforcement and accountability. There are laws on the books aimed at addressing pay discrepancy. During the regime of President J.F. Kennedy, an act called Equal Pay Act was passed to ban unequal compensation between men and women for equal job. In 2009, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act brought changes to the statute of limitations for equal pay lawsuits, giving women easy opportunity to sue their employers when it comes to pay discrimination. However, there remains pay disparities in the absence of real accountability.

Our government should come in and perfect the job such that equal pay becomes practical.

There should be fair pay for women. The time to have equal pay for the same work is now.

As a result of the pay disparity, a sum of $10,086 is lost by a woman per year, and $403,440 within 40 years. This means that women will probably have to work up to 15 months until 10th April for them to earn the sum earned by their male counterparts in the previous 12-month calendar year.

Despite many women being able to attain better education and their involvement in the labor market in the last decades, there is still unequal pay in more than 97% of available occupations. What this mean is that without regards to the kind of work done by a woman, she is likely to be paid less than her male counterparts for the same job. 

When we talk about equal pay, it means that individuals in the same workplace doing the same work must be paid equally. Just as it is the law for every boss to stand by, it is not limited to basic salary, but to all condition of employment and contractual terms, such as, bonuses, holiday entitlement, pay and reward plans, pension payments, and different advantages.

Although the reason for the existence of the law is to make sure that there is equal pay, however, it can be difficult to understand the code at times. 

The stand of the Equality Law is that there should be no discrimination according to age, sexual orientation, sex, gender reassignment, marriage and common organization, pregnancy, and maternity, race, religion or belief, and disability.

The pronouncement of court in US on April 9, 2018 is that it is not lawful for any boss to use the earlier pay rate of women for the legitimization of paying women less than men.

The following include three sorts of equal work:

  1. Like work:

 

Here, the works consist of comparable assignments requiring the same abilities, without sensible significance for any distinctions in work.

  1. Work appraised as equivalent:

Here, there is evaluation of work under a reasonable employment assessment scheme as an equivalent value as far as how demanding it is. An example is a teacher having the same value as that of a secretary when some job parts such as responsibility, skill, and effort are surveyed by a reasonable job assessment evaluation.

  1. Work of equivalent value:

Here, the work does not have comparison and there is no appraisal to say it is equal. However, it has the same value with respect to, for example, decision-making, short, and skill.

 

As a business owner, if you are trying to make decision about the level of pay of your employees, or about to choose the contractual benefits to offer them, you are under a legal commitment to make provision for equal pay. This does not have to do with your company’s size, or maybe it is a public or a private establishment.

Fewer wages are offered to women with children even following the consideration of working hours and qualifications. According to studies, businesses are not willing  to contract women with children as compared with women or men without children. They do not give much consideration to education and experience. According to the investigation on 200 managers at Fortune 100 firms, it was discovered that generally, there is the expectation that women employee are troubled in the adjustment of work and family than men, despite women reporting fewer problems. This results to less promotion offer to women.

There is security for people in a variety of classifications such as disability, sex, race, or veteran status as the state of Washington and the government has passed new anti-discrimination laws to the effect. With these laws, there is need for purposeful demonstration by women.

There might be different pay structures for different companies based on their sizes. Despite this, all employers need to ensure that their payment structure does not exhibit sex discrimination. The payment structure of businesses should not be gender biased. This will reduce the danger of the claim of an equal pay guarantee.

For eliminating the gender pay issue, there is no one approach to it. However, being transparent in terms of payment will ensure that people to have wage level increment, give women more career opportunities, and begin to tackle the underestimation of the society concerning the work of women.   

Authored by: Dr. Joseph Glasgow