Massachusetts gets it right

[Loren Pechtel]

(Partial paywall warning. You get 10 articles/month. If it gives trouble just use private browsing.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/business/dealbook/wage-gap-massachusetts-law-salary-history.html

Instead of fancy anti-discrimination measures you take way the information that causes the problem. In this case, salary history.

(Not that it's going to have the effect they think--mommy track is based in reality, not discrimination. It will help with those who end up underpaid for whatever reason, though.)

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Salary history helps companies find the cheapest professionals.

 

[ksen]

A Vox article on the same topic:

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12367284/massachusetts-equal-pay-law-salary-history-wage-gap

Massachussetts gets it right

From the Vox story:

What else does the new law do?

It bans pay secrecy

As in a number of other states, bosses in Massachusetts now can’t forbid their employees from discussing their salaries. The law also makes it easier for workers to sue if their boss unjustly fires or retaliates against them for discussing their pay.

Some employers either explicitly or implicitly ban the discussion of salaries, because they're afraid of stoking resentments or revealing inequities. And advocates say this lack of pay transparency contributes to the wage gap. Unconscious bias means women are frequently offered lower salaries for various reasons, and sometimes employers have no idea that they're consistently paying women less than men until they conduct pay audits.

If employees can discuss their salaries openly with each other, though, it can help draw attention to both intentional and unintentional pay inequity.

I thought you were against banning pay secrecy?

 

[JonA]

(Not that it's going to have the effect they think--mommy track is based in reality, not discrimination. It will help with those who end up underpaid for whatever reason, though.)

Humanity has to reproduce.

 

[prideandfall]

(Not that it's going to have the effect they think--mommy track is based in reality, not discrimination. It will help with those who end up underpaid for whatever reason, though.)

Humanity has to reproduce.

i consider that to be a very spurious claim with no evidence to support its veracity.

 

[Starr]

(Not that it's going to have the effect they think--mommy track is based in reality, not discrimination. It will help with those who end up underpaid for whatever reason, though.)

Humanity has to reproduce.

On the one hand I think forcing employers to ignore things like maternity leave when considering seniority might be a bad thing, because seniority is approximately equal to experience, and it makes sense to pay someone with more experience more.

On the other hand, because of the biological fact that only women can make babies, society needs to take that into consideration when determining what is fair. If every woman decided to put work ahead of having children, our society would fall apart pretty damn quick as we fail to replace our aging and dying population.

Maybe when we invent artificial wombs we can start treating men and women exactly the same...

 

[whichphilosophy]

Salary history helps companies find the cheapest professionals.

Correct and can discriminate against cost effective employees in favour of cheaper ones. There again the HR departments often know the cost of everything but understand the value of nothing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(Not that it's going to have the effect they think--mommy track is based in reality, not discrimination. It will help with those who end up underpaid for whatever reason, though.)

Humanity has to reproduce.

Which has nothing to do with whether employers should be required to ignore the less work turned out by those on the mommy track.

 

[JonA]

Humanity has to reproduce.

Which has nothing to do with whether employers should be required to ignore the less work turned out by those on the mommy track.

Employers are limited by what governments allow them to do. Governments will tell them what to do based on what gets those governments re-elected.

In a democracy, the people choose the society they want.

 

[JonA]

Humanity has to reproduce.

On the one hand I think forcing employers to ignore things like maternity leave when considering seniority might be a bad thing, because seniority is approximately equal to experience, and it makes sense to pay someone with more experience more.

On the other hand, because of the biological fact that only women can make babies, society needs to take that into consideration when determining what is fair. If every woman decided to put work ahead of having children, our society would fall apart pretty damn quick as we fail to replace our aging and dying population.

Maybe when we invent artificial wombs we can start treating men and women exactly the same...

It actually takes a man and a woman to make a baby: Biology 101. And both are really equally as capable of caring for one.

An obvious part of the solution to correcting for the "mommy track" experience - and promotability - gap is mandating paternity leave that is comparable to the offered maternity leave.

 

[coloradoatheist]

This will be one that economists study for a few years and see how they go. This one can easily backfire against the people you are trying to help.

A lower wage is a bargaining chip that someone has to compete against someone that has more experience.

If a company thinks they can offer a range of between $50K and $60K for a job then they can make a comparison of someone wanting $50K with 8 years experience compared to $55K with 10 years experience. But if they have to decide one or the other, they are going to look at whether they want the more experience or less experienced and if two people are applying but the one has more experience then they would get the job.

 

[Starr]

Uh yeah, a man can't incubate a baby, we don't have a uterus.

Now, as for non-maternity "mommy track" stuff, I am somewhat more against mandating a "privilege" for women there. However it is still important to keep in mind that biology is still in play. Mother's brains get bathed in hormones telling them "TAKE CARE OF THIS CHILD!!" that a father's brain doesn't quite get the same level of. No matter how much we want to treat men and women the same, they aren't, and we need our social policies to recognize this fact. So for instance, you suggest that we should simply have equitable paternity/maternity leave. I don't know if that is enough, I think that maybe paternity leave should be made more attractive than maternity leave to counteract the biological impulses that will, left on their own, make the mother much more likely to take time off than the father.

Basically anytime employment policy is dealing with human reproduction, it has to acknowledge that men and women simply play different and unequal roles. If we want to try to make advancement at work an equal playing field (as I think we should), it must involve giving women "advantages" in some cases, and perhaps as above, men "advantages" in other cases, to help counteract our natural biological tendencies.

 

[Deepak]

Uh yeah, a man can't incubate a baby, we don't have a uterus.

Now, as for non-maternity "mommy track" stuff, I am somewhat more against mandating a "privilege" for women there. However it is still important to keep in mind that biology is still in play. Mother's brains get bathed in hormones telling them "TAKE CARE OF THIS CHILD!!" that a father's brain doesn't quite get the same level of. No matter how much we want to treat men and women the same, they aren't, and we need our social policies to recognize this fact. So for instance, you suggest that we should simply have equitable paternity/maternity leave. I don't know if that is enough, I think that maybe paternity leave should be made more attractive than maternity leave to counteract the biological impulses that will, left on their own, make the mother much more likely to take time off than the father.

Basically anytime employment policy is dealing with human reproduction, it has to acknowledge that men and women simply play different and unequal roles. If we want to try to make advancement at work an equal playing field (as I think we should), it must involve giving women "advantages" in some cases, and perhaps as above, men "advantages" in other cases, to help counteract our natural biological tendencies.

Is 'leave', whether paternity or maternity, the issue here or is time off to raise the child actually the driver? Even considering a generous leave scheme as in say Australia - where the mother gets 18 weeks per child, over the course of 3 children that only amounts to a years worth of difference. I don't think I would find a meaningful difference between employees based on experience where one had 9 years in an industry and another had 10.

I don't have the data to support a claim either way, but my anecdotal experience is that women take time away from work to raise the children during their early developmental years which would be a larger contributer. If that is the case then what scheme could (or for that matter should) be proposed to counteract the gap?

 

[Bomb#20]

Humanity has to reproduce.

i consider that to be a very spurious claim with no evidence to support its veracity.

On the one hand, whether it's a spurious claim with no evidence to support its veracity is academic, since humanity is going to reproduce, regardless of whether or not it has to reproduce. On the other hand, whatever policy it being a spurious claim with no evidence to support its veracity would tend to support is probably correct policy, since humanity is going to reproduce, regardless of whether or not any of the measures argued for on the grounds that humanity has to reproduce are adopted.

 

[JonA]

Is 'leave', whether paternity or maternity, the issue here or is time off to raise the child actually the driver? Even considering a generous leave scheme as in say Australia - where the mother gets 18 weeks per child, over the course of 3 children that only amounts to a years worth of difference. I don't think I would find a meaningful difference between employees based on experience where one had 9 years in an industry and another had 10.

The difference doesn't come ten years down the road when some bean counter is adding up every employee's time on the job down to the second; it shows up immediately when New Mom comes back to work and her colleagues are all proficient in the software changes deployed during her absence that she must now struggle to learn.

I don't have the data to support a claim either way, but my anecdotal experience is that women take time away from work to raise the children during their early developmental years which would be a larger contributer. If that is the case then what scheme could (or for that matter should) be proposed to counteract the gap?

The scheme I mentioned would help counteract the gap by leveling the loss in experience caused by taking so much time off.

 

[JonA]

So for instance, you suggest that we should simply have equitable paternity/maternity leave. I don't know if that is enough, I think that maybe paternity leave should be made more attractive than maternity leave to counteract the biological impulses that will, left on their own, make the mother much more likely to take time off than the father.

You must live in a different world from the one everyone else lives in where anyone, man or woman, would jump at the chance to get paid to take several weeks off work to be with their newborn children.

Basically anytime employment policy is dealing with human reproduction, it has to acknowledge that men and women simply play different and unequal roles. If we want to try to make advancement at work an equal playing field (as I think we should), it must involve giving women "advantages" in some cases, and perhaps as above, men "advantages" in other cases, to help counteract our natural biological tendencies.

There are no "natural biological tendencies" at play because everyone wants to get paid without going to work.

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't believe that we need to overthink this, although it is a refreshing change.

Men and women should be paid the same amount for the same work.

The fact that women might have to take maternity leave at some time in the future or have taken maternity leave in the past, that is, that women have babies, is something to celebrate, not something to be taken into consideration setting their salary.

Pretty much done here.

 

[JonA]

The fact that women might have to take maternity leave at some time in the future or have taken maternity leave in the past, that is, that women have babies, is something to celebrate, not something to be taken into consideration setting their salary.

Has anyone proposed otherwise?

 

[ronburgundy]

Which has nothing to do with whether employers should be required to ignore the less work turned out by those on the mommy track.

Employers are limited by what governments allow them to do. Governments will tell them what to do based on what gets those governments re-elected.

In a democracy, the people choose the society they want.

In a Constitutional Democracy that respects basic human liberty (the only kind of Democracy with any positive value), the people are very limited in what the can force individuals to do or not do in order to engineer their preferred society.

Tyranny of the majority is no better than tyranny by a single dictator.

I'm not saying this automatically makes it unacceptable to force employers to ignore maternity leave, just that your general claim about "Democracy" is wrong and says nothing about whether a defensible society should allow such coercion.

 

[ronburgundy]

All income should be a matter of public record anyway. Economic activity relies directly upon publicly supported infrastructure, and income is an indicator of how much a person is using and benefiting from that public infrastructure.