How many people here agree with Roberts that women don't deserve

[genius]

equal pay?

[ecoflame]

1. Was this recent and if so - when?

I know there's record of something a good time ago.....years & years.

[genius]

2. And he cannot comment on it because he might have to rule on it

in the future.

[Why Syzygy]

3. Won't that be a treat!

What idiocy. Who do these people think they are dealing with? They best get a clue. Not in my world, bubba.

[rurallib]

4. I've worked with many who deserved more than their male

counterparts.

[Yupster]

5. You really need a link here

From what I've heard, Roberts talked about comparable pay which is very different from equal pay. There probably aren't many of us old geezers around reading this who remember when this was an issue in the news in the Seventies.

If comparable pay isn't what you're referring to, then please provide a link so we can be more informed.

If it is comparable pay you're referring to, you might want to explain that concept as most young people probably have never heard it explained.

[genius]

6. Here a link. It's been posted before at DU. I just googled it

and got a ton of links. Here's the top one.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-15-roberts_x.htm

[tritsofme]

7. How many Democrats do you see out there talking about comparable pay

today?

Until Roberts was nominated I hadn't heard the term in 20 years.

[Yupster]

19. Like I thought

"Roberts scoffed at equal pay theory." That's a lot different than equal pay.

The equal pay theory Roberts scoffed at was that of "comparable pay" which was a big issue during the 70's which I remember. It never went far as it was unworkable.

Here's how your ink describes it.

"The three were promoting the notion of equal pay for different jobs of comparable value, based on factors such as skills and responsibility."

The idea was that some jobs are mostly filled by wmen and others men. An english teacher which was mostly women required a bachelor's degree and preferably a master's degree and a teacher was responsible for monitoring over 100 people. Those are similar job requirements to an environmental engineer, which was mostly men at an outlying oil drilling satellite office. Therefore the two positions should pay the same.

I think the average reaction was huh?

You should change your poll to read how many agree with Roberts being against the equal pay theory of comparable worth. I think tat might be a more interesting discussion anyway.

[Kenroy]

8. When did he say

he didn't believe in equal pay?

[genius]

9. There is a link above and you can google more.

[Kenroy]

10. I read the link above

and it seems you are mistaken.

As also pointed out above, "comparable pay" and "equal pay" are not at all the same thing.

[genius]

11. Title: "Roberts scoffed at equal-pay theory"

It is talking about equal pay.

Here is the first paragraph:

As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.


Now, how about doing your own homework and looking at some of the other thousands of articles that google shows for this.

[tritsofme]

13. You're still talking about comparable pay.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the debates back then, but it is two very different concepts.

[Mairead]

14. No, they are not "very different" concepts

HR comp specialists evaluate different jobs all the time to set differential compensation. But what they've never done is to evaluate across 'gender-typical' aka 'sex bar' lines. A secretary is compared to a file clerk, and a mechanic to a toolroom clerk, but the secretary is never compared to the mechanic, nor the toolroom clerk to the file clerk.

[Igel]

24. The problem is that people tried to do so.

And the valuations varied a lot. Too much, depending who was doing it, and what was considered important.

Do I value education and experience? Working conditions? Number of calories burned in a typical workday? Risks of disability?

It would be nice if people settled on this things a priori, but they didn't. Instead, they sort of settled on which jobs were equivalent for gender-based reasons, and worked out their metrics from there. But most people disagreed with the metrics. This gave comparable worth a bad name.

I liked the idea at first; then I saw how people tried to implement it, and decided it was a bad idea. Maybe it's good in theory, but unimplementable by mere mortals.

[Mairead]

26. Other such evaluations based on opinion have no trouble being accepted

The intra-gender comp judgements are also matters of opinion. Who's to say a stockbroker is worth more than a surgeon, or a plumber worth more (or less) than an electrician? Or for that matter that a stockbroker is worth more than a plumber? But people routinely make such evaluations and they stick because the people running things ignore objections.

Which says to me that the reason it didn't work out for women is that the men running things didn't want it to work out.

[Igel]

36. But it's typically different people that make such evaluations,

and those that are employing them.

I'm allowed to disagree, as is everybody else. Except the employer.

The problem is that comparable worth says that a set of people may make such evaluations, and then compel people to abide by them, even though they may disagree. That means you'd need to reach some sort of general consensus, and then have Congress/Prez or a regulatory agency impose the evaluations. That, people didn't have the stomach for.

[warrens]

29. And Roberts questioned whether it could be done meaningfully

Which is a valid question. The poll makes it appear that he disagreed with equal pay for the same job. Which is not what he said. Whatever else may be wrong with him (and I think four missing years of writings, many of which probably concerned Iran-Contra is a real big tipoff), he didn't say what this thread is making it appear he did.

[genius]

12. Why are you so gung-ho on Roberts?

How about telling me what you like about him? Is it his position against choice you agree with or his support for Guantanamo and military tribunals or his questioning of the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act? Do you also like Terry White? I'm just curious what you like about Roberts such that you have defended him on two threads. Maybe you can educate us on his virtues.

[Yupster]

20. Excuse me, but

if you post that you think the Soviets should have executed Field Marshall Rundstedt when they captured him at Stalingrad, and if another poster corrects your error telling you it was Field Marshall Paulus captured not Rundstedt ....

It does not mean the person correcting your error is a Nazi symapathizer.

[RebelOne]

15. Who are the two idiots that voted "I do"?

[CTyankee]

17. I had the same question. Maybe they misread the question

I can't imagine any other reason. Could we hear from those two voters?

[Vektor]

18. Lurking RW trolls. Every poll attracts at least a couple.

They vote and run.

[sendero]

16. It's moot people..

... Roberts will be the chief justice soon. There's not even the slightest chance of it not happening.

[CitrusLib]

21. Sad, but true.

[CitrusLib]

22. This topic absolutely makes my blood boil!

I worked for a Fortune 100 company and found out shortly before I left that I was being paid over $10,000 less per year than a man who was hired the same day I was. I had a better college transcript and more relevant work experience. He and I were doing the EXACT same job in the EXACT same geographic area. Performance evaluations showed I was doing a better job. I still can't get the fucking company to explain the discrepancy to me. Fucktards.

[Igel]

23. And in that situation, there's no evidence at all that Roberts

wouldn't be for equal pay.

Equal pay. Comparable pay. They blur slightly at the edges, but they're still very different things.

You're talking equal pay. Roberts back in the '80s wasn't.

[Mairead]

27. No they're NOT "very different things"!

The slogan is 'equal pay for equal work'. But it's never really identical work, is it? So there's some comparative evaluation going on even between 2 people with the same title and broadly the same responsibilities. The only difference between 'equal pay for equal work' and 'equal pay for comparable work' is how big the circle of comparison is.

[FromTheLeft]

34. Yes they are

In fact equal pay for equal work doesn't even exist for many men.

Janitors at some companies get paid more then janitors at others. Same for Clerks, Secretaries, Middle Management, etc...

should every janitor in the country working at the same size firm get the same pay...

[Igel]

37. That's true. But if it's difficult to compare similar work in very

jobs, doesn't it become even harder for completely dissimilar occupations?

"Equal" has to be applied in a fuzzy manner (semanticists use the word 'squishy', I think) , and most people can agree on how fuzzy that is: the same job description, similar job duties, and satisfactory fulfillment of the duties. Anything more is handled by bonuses, which can be abused.

Gardener versus seamstress versus phone linesman. The idea of 'equal work' is fuzzy when applied to such disparate occupations as to be nearly meaningless, not just fuzzy or squishy.

[CitrusLib]

28. OK, you got me. What's the difference between Equal and Comparable pay?

In all seriousness. I'd like to know what makes them 'very different things'.

When do I considered myself paid equally and when am I paid comparably? I'm stumped.

[Yupster]

31. The concept of comparable pay was brought up

during the Seventies to address occupations which were largely single sex.

For instance almost all elementary teachers were women and almost all engineers were men.

The comparable worth movement attempted to compare the educational and workload requirements of largely women jobs with other jobs that were almost all men. Then the movement was to make the largely woman occupation pay the same as the largely man occupation.

It was an interesting idea, but it got into big arguments on which jobs were comparable to which and it never got close to implementation or law. I think no matter how empirical your data would be it would still come down to one person's opinion versus another of which job required more or helped more. Educator or engineer? Who's to say?

Anyway, it was an interesting proposal that came out of the progressive movement, it was debated quite lively for a number of years, but never went anywhere.

It is quite a different thing from equal pay for equal work as you are saying you were cheated of.

[CitrusLib]

35. So, in Roberts' case...

He is (or was) in favor of 'comparable' pay (assigning relative worth to male and female dominated positions) - a kind of screwy proposition considering the subjective nature of the argument as you pointed out.

So now I don't get what the big deal is. If the debate never went any where and presumably he's never said he's in favor of unEQUAL pay, why is this getting people's knickers in knots. Seems rather low on the list of priorities when discussing his beliefs and how he'll rule from the bench. Am I missing something?

Thanks for the explanation, by the way!

[Igel]

38. No, he was generally against comparable pay.

It was a common enough position.

The big deal is that his point of view has been billed as against *equal* pay, which is generally accepted. This would make him truly reactionary now, and mildly reactionary then.

That's why people are seen as "gung-ho" for Roberts. They're not. They dislike having his view twisted to say something he didn't. I have to imagine the reporter that first confused comparable and equal was simply ignorant. Otherwise, I'd consider him/her malevolent.

[Yupster]

43. No Roberts was against the concept of comparable pay

His opinion was that the government had no role in comparing which jobs were harder, tougher, more worthy thatn other jobs and therefore should stay far away from disputes over such things.

The reason it's become an issue is that some people are confusing comparable pay with equal pay which gives Roberts a viewpoint he doesn't have. My guess is the reporters who make this mistake are mostly just too young to remember what comparable pay is and too lazy to research it. I'm sure there are also some who are just malicious and know they're distorting Roberts' views but don't care if it supports the right cause.

[kath]

39. Same thing happened to a friend when she worked at Washington Univ. in St.

Louis. Guy doing the exact same job made $10K more than she did, which meant that he was making around FORTY TO FIFTY PERCENT more than she was. Outrageous.

[rinsd]

25. Comparable pay is not equal pay,

Geez we're getting to better than freepers as obfuscating for nice and tidy anger.

[tainowarrior]

30. umm....who voted I DO?

There's three votes there...

What's going on...has DU been infiltrated?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. Perhaps not.

The question is poorly phrased - if it means "Women should receive equal pay for the same work" then the answer is obviously yes, but if it means "the average wage for men and women across the population should be the same" then I think it's no, unless/until men and women are spending equal amounts of time working for employers and homebuilding on average.

I haven't answered the poll, and won't unless/until I find out what the question is. What comment of Roberts inspired it?

[MrSlayer]

33. Women in my trade are paid equally.

Yet another great thing about Unions.

[Yupster]

44. Mine too

Commission schedules don't see sex.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

40. I do.

They deserve more.

[FreedomAngel82]

41. I as a woman

do not! I want to be just as equal as any man. Why is he more important then me? I'm the one who has the kids!

[omega minimo]

42. THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT

:evilfrown: