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After Iceland and Germany, Now France Declares War on the Gender Wage Gap (fastcompany.com)
France says it wants to make good on at least one-third of its motto of "liberte, egalite, and fraternite," by ensuring pay equality. From a report: The French government announced it is devising a "tough, concrete" plan to make the gender pay gap as much a thing of the past as Madame DeFarge's knitting habit. Per the Associated Press, France's plan for pay equity is still a work in progress. However, legislators may require companies to release the average salaries of their male and female employees and analyze them for disparities.
As long as they release salaries *and* hours worked for a fair comparison, I'm ok with this.
I hadn't heard about France declaring war on Iceland and Germany!
Good to know our U.S. government aren't the only idiots to declare war on ideological and intangible things.
You want to fix a problem, then work towards a solution instead of chest-beating and pretending to "declare war" on it.
Will I get to take years off for maternity leave, and expect my job waiting for me?
Because in the real world, I lost my position because I took two months off to recover from having spinal fusion to have a tumor removed from my spinal cord.
That's the fucking real world, where a baby is a "special kind of tumor".
Will they tackle that as well? This is a serious question. I work with two other guys. I am paid less than one and more than the other. We all have different backgrounds doing the same work in the same position in the same location, in the same company. If we get a woman, who's pay should her's be compared to and why?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, the US couldn't do this. Compensation agreements are a matter of consent between private parties and many businesses (and many individuals) view that information as a trade secret or an equivalent. Forcing its disclosure for all employment agreements would cost private citizens and private businesses a competitive advantage and thus revenue, in violation of the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Also: WTF? Not all people perform the same quality of work in the same job category. In some white-collar jobs, it even defies quantification with GS ratings. So what a regulation like that would do (if it were even lawful, which it's not) is destroy fairness by preventing performance-based pay, destroy any incentive structure a business might have for motivating employees, and impose an additional paperwork burden that a) no one in government would even pay attention too since it would be a flood of information but also b) open up employers to liability and capricious enforcement from politically motivated government appointees and grandstanding politicians and bureaucrats looking to score points.
This is a horrible idea that will create chaos without solving anything. Do you work for the federal government? Have you ever had a real job in the private sector? Do you have any understanding of how business works or any respect for the idea that government's job is to serve its citizens and not to harass them? How in the world could you think this was a good idea?
This is going to get messy. How do France surrender to something that doesn't exist?
In my admittedly anecdotal experience, both men and women may be actually paid more for less productivity, if they have offset that poor level of productivity by socializing with their superiors.
The world is not the meritocracy that it should be. Sharing in the boss's favorite sport or hobby or spending time with them off-hours counts far more than it should.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It is a myth being sold to cover up yet another governmental power-grab. Equal pay for equal performance is the only possible outcome in anything resembling a free market. If a woman could be payed less for the same job, there would be near 100% male unemployment in just about every job besides sperm donor. Any aggregate disparaties between wages of *all* men and *all* women are the outcomes of individual choices made by consenting adults evaluating what's best for them in terms of career and life outside of work and any disparties if compensation for the same job title are largely the result of individual choices about the level of effort and amount of brownnosing applied to the job as opposed to having a life outside of work.
However, legislators may require companies to release the average salaries of their male and female employees and analyze them for disparities.
This type of analysis was tried in the US a few years ago, the politicians found pay disparities on gender when they simply did as discussed above (no surprise), but once they factored in things like comparing same jobs and years experience the pay disparity went away.
To save face, proponents liedand claimed the initial comparison was for men and women doing 'exactly the same job' (when it clearly wasn't) and those that believed there was gender-based pay inequities never challenged findings they already believed.
Ken
When did this happen?
CEO botches a deal, it may cost the company a million dollars. Joe bungles the widget he's working on, maybe it costs a hundred dollars to fix, if that.
What should an employer do in cases where female employees take significantly more time out of the industry then male ones, to raise kids?
If an employer has a female workforce with average experience of (say) 10 years, and males with average 15 years experience, and if it's a sector such as medicine where experience massively affects capability, how should the pay policy work?
If the employer pays by gender equality, then female employees of lesser experience who took time out for child raising will be getting paid more than male employees of greater experience who stayed, continued their training and built their skills. Employees of greater merit will be suffering pay disadvantage.
But if the employer pays by merit and experience, the average female pay will be significantly lower than average male pay, and the employer will be exposed to legal problems.
What is an employer to do here?
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Call me when women are 50% in mining, underwater welding, septic tank maintenance, construction, etc... etc... etc....