Congratulations,jclientelle, you've found the wienie!
Too bad you didn't have more time - I'm sure you would have seen differences in pays even among ethnic and gender equals.

Keeping wage data secret is a big advantage for management. They know what we get, but we don't know what they get. We become mushrooms. I believe that wage date, names removed, should be public information.

At one job, the management kept telling us there was no money so there would be no raises. This went on for at least three years, while they laid people off and increased the work load for those who were left. They tried outsourcing most of our jobs to India, but that didn't work out because people thousands of miles away could not understand the job. They tried subcontracting us to IBM, but that didn't work out because IBM is run like the Army, lots of paperwork and the agility of a brontosaur. At each management change, they said we would be getting the same pay, but they removed benefits, like paying for our health care, resulting in actual reduction in take home.

Then someone in personnel "accidentally" emailed everyone a memo with a huge spreadsheet attached. It had the salaries and bonuses of management as well as staff. Everyone was told to delete it immediately because it contrained social security numbers. Naturally some did not or looked up some key information in the few minutes they had it.

What an eye opener. The truth is always worse than you imagine. The management salaries were huge, and the bonuses if distributed could have given everyone a decent raise. I did not get a chance to save mine before it was electronically recalled. I'll bet there was a pattern of wage discrimination against women, immigrants and African-Americans.

That is what management does these days - lay off people, increase the workload, cut pay and benefits and reward themselves with big bonuses for their good work.

Salary data (names removed) should be open to inspection by workers or their reps. I am sure some CD readers will think that is not a good idea because we are so used to being controlled and kept in the dark and we buy the false notion of privacy. But every management person can see what we get. Why not the opposite? What are we, peons? Oh.........

Rockerbabe1 - I graduated college in 1967, and retired just 7 years ago - I've seen more than a few scams myself. Your rejoinder was precisely my point. (Read my original post again.) All the biz-dudes did was co-opt the language and the approach, add a lot of squishy emotionality, sister-bonding crap, some nonsense about "choice" - one of them was the "focus group" - remember when even commercials were set up with women's focus groups to sell trivial sh*t? That's what I mean - co-opt the terminology, twist it into some big manipulation, fool most of the people much of the time. My point is exactly that corporate America wasn't interested in or supportive of attempts at pay equality - what they wanted and did was use the inflood of extra labour to keep men's paychecks down. Even so, men made more than women, and still do; progress is glacially slow. And the beauty of it was that the men, ripped off by other men, then blamed the women. I agree with you that one of the biggest betrayals and exploitations is the "non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement" (really signed under duress), the only purpose of which is to steal power from the worker. It's all so obvious. Has been for a while.

Moreover, we've been backsliding for 30 years.

Plus ça change!

Juliann: Good post; I never thought of men and their merits in those terms, but I now have several another talking points to my arguments. Not only do men cost our society more, we budget them more program, salary and benefit money (defense, law-enforcement, spying, bureaucracy in general, justice, infrastructure and government in general, etc). AND when you consider all the men on social security and medicare (althought not as many as women), it all adds up.
medusa: feministism was not supported by corporate America; they went kicking and screaming into this brave new world - I know, I went to college in the early 70's and entered the professional workforce around that time. It was difficult at best. The younger women have not provided the support needed to carry on with the progress; they take for granted, all that was achieved in the 70's. And now, given the overt sexism displayed by so many in the media and Senator McCain's comments about equal pay, one wonders what happened. As if female citizens were not entitled to decent, fair treatment for work performed.

I can say without a doubt, that talking about salary and benefits openly has helped employees negoiate more equatable compensation packages, especially in healthcare. I think salary information should be available publically, once a year (anomyously), so employees can judge where they stand. It would also be helpful if executive salaries and qualifications were also public knowledge. That would go along way in enlightening the working masses.

brontoburger My point was that we didn't get equality at all, and some got taken away from men in the process, for which they mistakenly blamed women. What women got was the same work for less pay and a second shift at home. Plus a bunch of workplace abuse.

When everything is counted, not just the stuff Wall Street counts, women still do about 75% of all the work on this planet - maybe what some see as PMS is just the effects of overwork and underpay. That skinny little high school girl at the local supermarket lifts more weight in a year than a construction worker does.
80% of all the farmers on this planet are women, and many work with a baby strapped to their back.

This isn't equality, but it suits men not to see it properly.

When I first joined the Dept of Labor we had a new provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Equal Pay Act, to enforce. It required equal pay for men and women using substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility in their jobs. My lawyers loved this statute, as the sex-based pay inequality was so ingrained in the US system that we could find violators almost everywhere. Most of their defense consisted of the trivial and meaningless straw man arguments raised by real world above. Of course, once the law went into effect, corporations weren't so blatant and came up with ways they thought could circumvent compliance and keep women's pay down.

The recent Supreme Court decision actually overturned decades of FLSA precedent (ie, they made their own law - gotta love those strict constructionist Republican appointees who swear up an down to uphold precedent and not make law from the bench like "activist liberal" judges) which had always established that The Act applies on workweek basis, basically stating continuing violations restart the statuory clock every week the underpayment continues.

Is it any wonder the Republican corporations-have-more-rights-than-individuals court made this activist ruling against precedent? Is it any wonder the Republicans have threatened to filibuster the Kennedy corrective bill? Do flag-obsessed working stiffs who continue to vote Republican realize they are signing their own death warrants? Is there a single Republican who is not worthless bagman for their corporate masters? No, no, no, and most emphatically, no!

As I've seen more women stuck in the wage-slave corporate model I've seen them complain about it. The men (we) have been in it for awhile and yes it sucks...congratulations. You wanted equality you got it....it just wasn't the greener grass you were expecting.

Another reason unions are important - another reason they're being destroyed.

I've often heard men blame women for their poor progress up the salary scale, and in a way they're right - When that whole "I can bring home the bacon - I am woman hear me roar..." (what a thrill to carry a double load!) business started, "allowing" women into the workplace, it looked a lot like progress on equality. But the intention was to stock electronics factories with compliant assembly line workers AND to flood the labour market to keep men's salaries down. Suddenly, we heard about the wonders of the Japanese system (the 120-hour week), and the evolutionary "discovery" that women's hands were better suited to fine assembly work than men's. Apparently, their brains were still too stupid to actually "allow" them into the board rooms.

Look where the nonsense has led us - sweat shops staffed with women and children (even cheaper than women), driving down wages for women, too, and a lot of men blaming women for salaries that can't support even a single man decently.

Being a feminist myself, I am absolutely convinced that feminism would not have been supported in the 70's and 80's if there wasn't an opportunity for the Captains of Industry to manipulate the dream of gender equality for their own profit.

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked legislation to reverse a Supreme Court ruling that makes it tougher for workers to sue for pay discrimination."

I'll NEVER vote for another Republican. Federal, state or local I've had it with these homocidal looting liars!

It goes both ways girls.

Think about this: You are in a burning building. You weigh 200 pounds. Which person would you rather have carry you out of the building, A petite little 5 foot, 100 pound woman who is a fireman due to relaxed standards or a strapping 6 foot 200 pound male?

Equal pay for equal work.

Justice should not rely on gender.
workingamerica@aflcio.org

Ditto, bluesky. I have for 40 yrs worked in secretarial/admin positions and had access to what has been going on all those years. When I first started there were LEGALLY two payscales for the same positions: male (higher), female (lower). Now much of that is hidden. And now I work for a company that is equitable. It can happen and must.

In the meantime, I propose TWO DIFFERENT TAX SCALES: One male, one female. Men cost our society way too much money. Not only do women earn 75% of what men earn - we pay the same tax rates. Men fill the prisons. Men fill the best jobs. Men get the kickbacks. Men cause the majority of crime.

TWO DIFFERENT TAX SCALES. And now.

It is a man's world. And they have F'ed it up royally. Will it ever be fair and equal pay? Not while they are in charge.