Scott Walker Codifies Work Discrimination

[Smurfette Principle]

Yes, he fucking did.

With a stroke of his pen on Thursday, ultra-conservative Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker quietly eliminated the state’s equal pay law that allows women and others who feel discriminated against to file charges in state and local courts.

Supported by big business in Wisconsin, SB 202 effectively repeals the Equal Pay Enforcement Act of 2009, which gave women time to file discrimination lawsuits against their workplace when they discover they’ve been paid unfairly for their work. The Act was a response inspired by Lilly Ledbetter, a woman who had been discriminated against by her workplace for years without knowing it and when she finally took the case to federal court, she won. But her case was thrown out by the conservative Supreme Court, which ruled that she filed the suit too late and should have filed it as soon as the discrimination began, even though she didn’t even know about it for years.

The Republican controlled Senate and House both voted to repeal the law. The Senate voted to repeal it in November of 2011, while the House voted for repeal in February of this year. Because of this, women in Wisconsin can be discriminated against without their knowledge and be paid less by their employers. Employers can do this and get away with it as long as women don’t have knowledge of it for a certain amount of time, which is wrong. That’s why Wisconsin passed the Equal Pay Act in the first place.

I'd love to know their justification for repeal. I want to know how exactly they spun this so it isn't blatant discrimination based on gender.

[QueenofHearts]

First, the fact that the Wisconsin GOP would do this is just sickening. It makes me wonder how they can deny they are waging war against women, and sadly with this repeal other minorities as well.

Second, I don't think this will result in a huge change. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair pay act of 2009 (a piece of federal legislation) should cover this sort of thing unless there exists some nuance I'm not aware of.

[Sixth Monarchist]

I might have said this before at some point, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans, sometime around 2020, were suddenly exposed through a memo leak as classical Marxists attempting to provoke the USA and, by proxy, the Western world into a revolution. As a hypothesis, it explains their actions so much more than "they're really right wing", and is in fact the second best hypothesis for this purpose.

The first, of course, is "they're fucking insane".

[Osama bin Bambi]

Progress

Yer doin' it wrong

[Cloudy]

I found this in the comments section:

it is so sad if any of you read these words on this page and believe that the heart of the matter is to keep women down. For those of you who claim to be educated, think through this and go read the real facts and see if anything in this article is real, or just a scare tactic? It is sad to see that the Obama administration is trying to scare women into voting Democratic. What ever your political affiliation, educate your self on the issues, don't just believe any political rant that is posted. Then make an educated comment.

Um....what?

[DasFuchs]

Saw this coming. I mean look how much he cares about fair workplaces already

[Witchyjoshy]

THAT SCUM.

THAT MISOGYNISTIC SCUM.

GET HIM THE FUCK OUT OF MY STATE!

[Thejebusfire]

Somebody should remind this guy that he was elected governor, not king.

[Smurfette Principle]

Well, I looked for a reason, and look! Here it is!

Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.”

He continues, “What you’ve got to look at, and Ann Coulter has looked at this, is you have to break it down by married and unmarried. Once you break it down by married and unmarried, the differential disappears.”

In fact, despite Coulter’s well-known expertise in the field, this is incorrect. A 2007 study by the American Association of University Women found that college-educated women earn only 80 percent as much as similarly educated men a year after graduation. Part of that is attributable to differences in life choices and family circumstances, but not all. “After accounting for college major, occupation, industry, sector, hours worked, workplace flexibility, experience, educational attainment, enrollment status, GPA, institution selectivity, age, race/ethnicity, region, marital status, and number of children, a 5 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation was still unexplained,” it said. After 10 years in the workforce, there’s an unexplained 12 percent gap.

“The idea that pay discrimination is a myth is a myth in and of itself,” says Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center. “Study after study has shown the exact opposite.”

Grothman doesn’t accept these studies. When I ran the numbers by him, he replied, “The American Association of University Women is a pretty liberal group.” Nor, he argued, does its conclusion take into account other factors, like “goals in life. You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”

[Osama bin Bambi]

Wage discrimination on the basis of sex is not only an expression of sexism, but it is a way of enforcing gender roles on society as well. Paying women less because they might make "life choices" assumes that women are "supposed to" raise families, while men are still supposed to be breadwinners. I'll be the first to admit that my father isn't exactly the best I could have hoped for, but realistically there's no reason why having a dick prevents one from raising children while the wife works outside the home. In fact, in economic climes like these, it's become something of a necessity in more than a few cases.

[shykid]

The GOP is starting to look more and more like a caricature of Saturday morning cartoon villains.

Then make an educated comment.

You first.

[Lt. Fred]

I found this in the comments section:

it is so sad if any of you read these words on this page and believe that the heart of the matter is to keep women down. For those of you who claim to be educated, think through this and go read the real facts and see if anything in this article is real, or just a scare tactic? It is sad to see that the Obama administration is trying to scare women into voting Democratic. What ever your political affiliation, educate your self on the issues, don't just believe any political rant that is posted. Then make an educated comment.

Um....what?

"You only disagree with me because you're stupid and I'm smart. If you were smart like me, you'd know that Governor Walker has some nonspecific unbigoted reason to discriminate against women in the workforce."

[Osama bin Bambi]

I found this in the comments section:

it is so sad if any of you read these words on this page and believe that the heart of the matter is to keep women down. For those of you who claim to be educated, think through this and go read the real facts and see if anything in this article is real, or just a scare tactic? It is sad to see that the Obama administration is trying to scare women into voting Democratic. What ever your political affiliation, educate your self on the issues, don't just believe any political rant that is posted. Then make an educated comment.

Um....what?

"You only disagree with me because you're stupid and I'm smart. If you were smart like me, you'd know that Governor Walker has some nonspecific unbigoted reason to discriminate against women in the workforce."

"I'm not sexist, but it's fair and reasonable that women can be paid less than men because they're supposed to stay domestic."

[Smurfette Principle]

I found this in the comments section:

it is so sad if any of you read these words on this page and believe that the heart of the matter is to keep women down. For those of you who claim to be educated, think through this and go read the real facts and see if anything in this article is real, or just a scare tactic? It is sad to see that the Obama administration is trying to scare women into voting Democratic. What ever your political affiliation, educate your self on the issues, don't just believe any political rant that is posted. Then make an educated comment.

Um....what?

"You only disagree with me because you're stupid and I'm smart. If you were smart like me, you'd know that Governor Walker has some nonspecific unbigoted reason to discriminate against women in the workforce."

"I'm not sexist, but it's fair and reasonable that women can be paid less than men because they're supposed to stay domestic."

"Besides, women choose to take time off work to raise their children. No one is ever forced by circumstances beyond their control to do things they don't want to do."

[ironbite]

I found this in the comments section:

it is so sad if any of you read these words on this page and believe that the heart of the matter is to keep women down. For those of you who claim to be educated, think through this and go read the real facts and see if anything in this article is real, or just a scare tactic? It is sad to see that the Obama administration is trying to scare women into voting Democratic. What ever your political affiliation, educate your self on the issues, don't just believe any political rant that is posted. Then make an educated comment.

Um....what?

"You only disagree with me because you're stupid and I'm smart. If you were smart like me, you'd know that Governor Walker has some nonspecific unbigoted reason to discriminate against women in the workforce."

"I'm not sexist, but it's fair and reasonable that women can be paid less than men because they're supposed to stay domestic."

"Besides, women choose to take time off work to raise their children. No one is ever forced by circumstances beyond their control to do things they don't want to do."

Also they have vaginas and those are just icky