Should the mostly women at Tesco be given arthritis with their £4 billion settlement?

[repoman]

They are not doing the same joint destroying work that the mostly male employees in the other department are doing. I think that male disposability is something that is hardwired into humans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tesco-record-equal-pay-claim-4-billion_uk_5a7aae9fe4b0d0ef3c0aade9?ncid=APPLENEWS 00001

 

[Derec]

Feminists do not want equal pay for equal work, they want equal pay for lesser work. That's what the 73% claim is all about.
If the women wanted to make 11 pounds, they should have applied for the warehouse jobs, and have been willing to actually do the work. Taking the easier, lesser paid job, and then demanding money 26 years later is ridiculous.

 

[Harry Bosch]

They are not doing the same joint destroying work that the mostly male employees in the other department are doing. I think that male disposability is something that is hardwired into humans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tesco-record-equal-pay-claim-4-billion_uk_5a7aae9fe4b0d0ef3c0aade9?ncid=APPLENEWS 00001

Yea, that judgement is a headscratcher. Working in a retail store is not equal to working in a distribution center. I've done both. Working in a distribution center is far more physical and demanding. It's hard to get people to want to do that kind of work, hence the higher wages. In the US, equal work is defined as equal skills, equal efforts, equal responsibility, with similar working conditions.

 

[laughing dog]

I would be more interested in the particulars of the lawsuit before passing judgment on the merits of the claims.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is a claim, not an award.

Unless they discourage women from working in the distribution center I don't see that it has any basis.

 

[Arctish]

This is a claim, not an award.

Unless they discourage women from working in the distribution center I don't see that it has any basis.

You don't see it because the plaintiffs haven't presented all their evidence or articulated their argument. They haven't done it because their lawsuit hasn't yet made it to trial. Once they present their documentation and witness testimony in court, we can see if they met the burden of proof.

 

[Jon Osterman]

There was a similar descision made against ASDA a few years ago.

 

[Derec]

There was a similar descision made against ASDA a few years ago.

The laws that makes these suits possible need to change. Saying women should be paid equally for equal work is right, but demanding women get paid equally for unequal work is feminist perversion.

 

[Arctish]

There was a similar descision made against ASDA a few years ago.

The laws that makes these suits possible need to change. Saying women should be paid equally for equal work is right, but demanding women get paid equally for unequal work is feminist perversion.

From the ASDA link:
"Leigh Day, which represents 7,000 mainly female workers from Asda’s stores, says they are now able to lodge claims that they are paid less than other employees for doing “women’s work”.

The female workers in Asda’s shops say they are paid less than the mostly male workers in its distribution warehouses, despite their jobs being of “equal value”."

It appears the issue hinges on how one determines value. Is it a function of how heavy a box an employee can lift? How many transactions an employee can complete in an hour? How many items pass through an employees hands on their way to the sales floor or to a paying customer? How much value an employee adds through their skills as a meat cutter or fishmonger or pharmacist tech or childcare provider at the in-store supervised play area? It's not an easy call.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

A job being of equal value to a company doesn’t mean that it should be paid equally. If two jobs are shown to be of equal value to a company, but there’s a pool of one thousand potential employees who can do one and a pool of ten thousand potential employees who can do the other, then the one with a larger group of applicants competing for it should be paid less. The same would hold true for any other factors which differentiate the two.

I’m not meaning that specifically in reference to the two jobs mentioned here, just in response to the claim that if the jobs are equally valuable, that’s reason enough to judge them as being worthy of the same pay rate.

 

[Arctish]

Well yeah, if you have to offer a higher wage to get trained meat cutters to agree to work for you then that's what you're going to do. But if you have plenty of applicants for basic entry-level jobs that require no special skills or training, then valid reasons for paying the men more than the women are going to be hard to come by.

 

[laughing dog]

There was a similar descision made against ASDA a few years ago.

The laws that makes these suits possible need to change. Saying women should be paid equally for equal work is right, but demanding women get paid equally for unequal work is feminist perversion.

Since you don't know what the basis for this particular lawuit is, you really have no basis for your observations.

 

[Harry Bosch]

There was a similar descision made against ASDA a few years ago.

The laws that makes these suits possible need to change. Saying women should be paid equally for equal work is right, but demanding women get paid equally for unequal work is feminist perversion.

From the ASDA link:
"Leigh Day, which represents 7,000 mainly female workers from Asda’s stores, says they are now able to lodge claims that they are paid less than other employees for doing “women’s work”.

The female workers in Asda’s shops say they are paid less than the mostly male workers in its distribution warehouses, despite their jobs being of “equal value”."

It appears the issue hinges on how one determines value. Is it a function of how heavy a box an employee can lift? How many transactions an employee can complete in an hour? How many items pass through an employees hands on their way to the sales floor or to a paying customer? How much value an employee adds through their skills as a meat cutter or fishmonger or pharmacist tech or childcare provider at the in-store supervised play area? It's not an easy call.

Salary isn't based on value. It's really based on demand. For example, often times a science or math teacher will be paid more than a music teacher because there are fewer math teachers than music. In the discussed case, it's generally more difficult to get people to work in a warehouse than in an air conditioned retail store.

 

[Arctish]

From the ASDA link:
"Leigh Day, which represents 7,000 mainly female workers from Asda’s stores, says they are now able to lodge claims that they are paid less than other employees for doing “women’s work”.

The female workers in Asda’s shops say they are paid less than the mostly male workers in its distribution warehouses, despite their jobs being of “equal value”."

It appears the issue hinges on how one determines value. Is it a function of how heavy a box an employee can lift? How many transactions an employee can complete in an hour? How many items pass through an employees hands on their way to the sales floor or to a paying customer? How much value an employee adds through their skills as a meat cutter or fishmonger or pharmacist tech or childcare provider at the in-store supervised play area? It's not an easy call.

Salary isn't based on value. It's really based on demand. For example, often times a science or math teacher will be paid more than a music teacher because there are fewer math teachers than music. In the discussed case, it's generally more difficult to get people to work in a warehouse than in an air conditioned retail store.

You're assuming the working conditions in one are substantially better than the other. But even if that's the case and stores have to offer higher pay to staff their warehouses, the higher pay will attract job seekers of all genders. And anyway, we're talking about a largely unskilled workforce working for an hourly wage, not salaried employees.

There's no reason a woman can't pick goods off a warehouse shelf or a man can't place those same goods on a shelf in a grocery store.

 

[Harry Bosch]

From the ASDA link:
"Leigh Day, which represents 7,000 mainly female workers from Asda’s stores, says they are now able to lodge claims that they are paid less than other employees for doing “women’s work”.

The female workers in Asda’s shops say they are paid less than the mostly male workers in its distribution warehouses, despite their jobs being of “equal value”."

It appears the issue hinges on how one determines value. Is it a function of how heavy a box an employee can lift? How many transactions an employee can complete in an hour? How many items pass through an employees hands on their way to the sales floor or to a paying customer? How much value an employee adds through their skills as a meat cutter or fishmonger or pharmacist tech or childcare provider at the in-store supervised play area? It's not an easy call.

Salary isn't based on value. It's really based on demand. For example, often times a science or math teacher will be paid more than a music teacher because there are fewer math teachers than music. In the discussed case, it's generally more difficult to get people to work in a warehouse than in an air conditioned retail store.

You're assuming the working conditions in one are substantially better than the other. But even if that's the case and stores have to offer higher pay to staff their warehouses, the higher pay will attract job seekers of all genders. And anyway, we're talking about a largely unskilled workforce working for an hourly wage, not salaried employees.

There's no reason a woman can't pick goods off a warehouse shelf or a man can't place those same goods on a shelf in a grocery store.

Yes, I assume that most people would rather work in an air conditioned store with customers than picking up heavy boxes all day in a warehouse. I'm not following your second point. But it would seem to me an easy case of discrimination if women who wanted the higher pay were being disencouraged from working in the warehouse. I agree that many women could work in a warehouse. And there are many men who work in a grocery store.

 

[laughing dog]

Salary isn't based on value. It's really based on demand. For example, often times a science or math teacher will be paid more than a music teacher because there are fewer math teachers than music.

Price (of labor) is determined by the interaction of demand and supply, not demand alone or supply alone.

In the discussed case, it's generally more difficult to get people to work in a warehouse than in an air conditioned retail store.

First, why do you assume a warehouse is not air conditioned? Many warehouses are air conditioned. Second, inducing people to work in a less pleasant place usually means higher wages. But as Arctish points out, one would expect that to draw people from all genders.

Which is why it makes sense to wait for the plaintiffs case and the defendent's response to be presented before jumping to conclusions.

 

[Toni]

From the ASDA link:
"Leigh Day, which represents 7,000 mainly female workers from Asda’s stores, says they are now able to lodge claims that they are paid less than other employees for doing “women’s work”.

The female workers in Asda’s shops say they are paid less than the mostly male workers in its distribution warehouses, despite their jobs being of “equal value”."

It appears the issue hinges on how one determines value. Is it a function of how heavy a box an employee can lift? How many transactions an employee can complete in an hour? How many items pass through an employees hands on their way to the sales floor or to a paying customer? How much value an employee adds through their skills as a meat cutter or fishmonger or pharmacist tech or childcare provider at the in-store supervised play area? It's not an easy call.

Salary isn't based on value. It's really based on demand. For example, often times a science or math teacher will be paid more than a music teacher because there are fewer math teachers than music. In the discussed case, it's generally more difficult to get people to work in a warehouse than in an air conditioned retail store.

First off, these sorts of jobs pay hourly wages, not salary, but that’s a quibble.

A larger flaw in your reasoning is that you are assuming open markets. I’ve never lived in GB but I would guess that it is safe to assume that not all jobs were open to women. This is based on my personal US experience that some higher paid jobs were not open to women. For a long time, it was explicitly so stated in the job descriptions. Later, as such discrimination was being frowned upon, male jobs were protected by inserting into job descriptions such verbiage as: “Must be able to lift routinely 50 pounds repetitively,” even when the actual job did not require heavy lifting. It’s been some years, but I’ve been told directly by my (then) supervisor that I did not need as much money as a guy. Quite recently, a co-worker opined that he couldn’t understand why I was working since my husband ‘had a good job.’

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I have been dealing with something similar recently that made me really scratch my head. One of our companies was randomly selected by the pay equity office for a review. I have to satisfy them that our jobs that are traditionally female, even if men are actually doing them (and we have some in that position) are paid as well OR BETTER than jobs that are traditionally male. They explicitly phrased it "as well or better" and made no such demand for "male jobs" being paid as well as "female jobs" or the jobs being paid according to actual merit. Worse still, since its all based on "women's work" and "men's work" (I can't believe how sexist that is and yet our Province pushes for it), they have no provision here that would deal with women being paid less than men doing the exact same job. And we have 2 women doing "men's work" and 2 men doing "women's work" and the "women's work" is what the province cares about... not the women.

Very odd indeed. But that's what you get with rule by committee of special interest groups.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is a claim, not an award.

Unless they discourage women from working in the distribution center I don't see that it has any basis.

You don't see it because the plaintiffs haven't presented all their evidence or articulated their argument. They haven't done it because their lawsuit hasn't yet made it to trial. Once they present their documentation and witness testimony in court, we can see if they met the burden of proof.

1) That says they got the right to sue, not that they won.

2) It's bullshit anyway. They're basing it on jobs of "equal value". Sorry, but the difficulty of a job matters, as does the required training. Obviously, in a case like this there's no training issue but the difficulty still matters.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well yeah, if you have to offer a higher wage to get trained meat cutters to agree to work for you then that's what you're going to do. But if you have plenty of applicants for basic entry-level jobs that require no special skills or training, then valid reasons for paying the men more than the women are going to be hard to come by.

You are assuming there are plenty of applicants.

Offer what you are offering cashiers for distribution warehouse work and you'll find the pool just about empty. Given the equal salary everyone would prefer to be a cashier.