Pay Equity And Women In Lowest Level Jobs; Minimum Wage And The GOP

Pay Equity, Minimum Wage and the woman worker…… John F. Kennedy had foresight on inequity for women in the workplace.

“[W]e have by no means done enough to strengthen family life and at the same time encourage women to make their full contribution as citizens. If our nation is to be successful in the critical period ahead, we must rely upon the skills and devotion of all our people. … It is appropriate at this time … to review recent accomplishments, and to acknowledge frankly the further steps that must be taken. This is a task for the entire nation.”

504 – Statement by the President on the Establishment of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.
December 14, 1961
_________________________

Ah, the beauty of reflection to a time when ideology and working towards a great future was like a rose budding to blossom and casting a “hopeful” shadow across the nation. Hopeful regarding…..

The Status of Women
    Civil Rights: “Out of Jim Crow”
       Concern for the poor and underprivileged
           The hope of Fair Pay for women and minorities
               Eventual War that would unleash a societal evolution
                   Booming manufacturing
                        Off-shoring jobs wasn’t on the radar screen
                             The Kochs did not have a grip on the GOP

And, all before the nation turned to Richard Nixon and the new GOP and 1970s neo-conservative ideology. The beautiful blossoming rose prematurely withered with the eventual election of Ronald Reagan. The Father of Modern Conservatism administered with regressive conservative ideology and policy to reverse growing social change. Reagan and his party initiated federal policy that led to (protective) moats for US industrialist. Ultimately, his economic policies fueled development of a US “income caste system.”

Since the Reagan Era, the nation has experienced Civil and Human Rights paradigms akin to that of pre-1960s social Dark Ages. Paradigms that have metastasized with the election of Barack Obama to a social phenomenon one can only call a rebirth of unabashed racism. Racism actually practiced and broadcast by well-viewed media (Fox News) and manifest like a completely soaked sponge around the fringe of the GOP (and the libertarian movement). The socially deprived seem to use media (eg., talk radio and Fox News) to feed from the sponge as social oppression permeates to the core of US conservative ideology. The permeating sponge represents the growth of “isms” that at one time was moved to the “back-40” of the US social landscape. Did I mention pay equity, the Minimum Wage and women?

People who practice or perpetrate “isms” carry then around in bundles. You will not find a racist who is free of homophobia. You will only rarely find a person suffering from homophobia who is free of the ravages of sexism. I further posit, you will not find a person infested with sexism who will rally around or champion fair and equal pay for women. Maybe less pronounced, but women who live in such environments know it is a reality.

Sexism has become such a worldwide norm women’s pay equity issues in industrialized nations are completely ignored. In the United States, millions ignore the male to female pay ratio of women earning $.77 for every dollar earned by her male cohorts. Women are also guilty complacency in acceptance of pay inequity.  When women in the millions do themselves great harm when they vote for a party that cares as much about pay-equity as it cares about climate issues. Indifferent women literally enable one of US societies’ most virulent “isms.” Pay inequality with women occupying the majority of lower level jobs, and receiving the lowest levels of pay, is the epitome of sexism.

Read more after the break below

How is it possible the following is so easy to ignore? Let’s start with the perfect high-end example: the woman Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In the summer of 2013, Bloomberg reviewed the S&P 500 top executives and found a 17% disparity in women CEO Pay and average CEO pay.  The following table shows a mixed bag, but the message is clear. 

If industrialist and Wall Street executives pay women at the highest levels moderately less than her male counterparts, do you think those power-brokers have concern for lower end employees?  The question is rhetorical, we know what they do and the evidence is easy to locate.

First, know that women occupy the majority of lower paid jobs.  A look back 50 years.

Women comprise 53% of the workforce. Seventy per cent of mothers work to support a family.   Since the mid 1960s, the income disparity (gap) has kept pace with increases in pay among various race and gender demographic groups. Progress in reducing the gap doe snot exist; actually the gap has every so slightly widened. The following chart unfortunately ends in 2008, but we have major suspicion the trend lines continue as delineated in the chart. Fabulous Broke Dot Com 

Last summer the White House published a report from a National Equal Pay Task Force. 

The LA Times June 13, 2013

The conclusion? The top professions among women haven’t changed all that much over the last half century. Women are still more likely than men to work minimum-wage or low-pay service jobs. 

In 1960, the top five leading occupations for women were private household workers, secretaries, sales clerks, elementary school teachers and bookkeepers. 

In 2010, the leading categories haven’t changed much. The top five are secretaries, nurses, elementary and high school teachers, cashiers and retail clerks. 

The report found male-dominated jobs that do not require higher education still often pay more than the kinds of jobs mostly taken up by women.

A National Equal Pay Task Force table shows clear evidence of job level regression (over the past 30 years) and it shows women occupy many lower paying jobs.

The Obama Administration has nudged pay disparity among men and actual women closer to equity, but a stubborn gap remains.

The Society of Human Resources Management June 13, 2013

Women’s Pay Still Lags Behind Men’s Excerpt The day the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, women earned, on average, 59 cents for every dollar a man earned. “Today it’s about 77 cents,” President Obama said on June 10, 2013, in the East Room of the White House. “So, it was 59 and now it’s 77 cents. It’s even less, by the way, if you’re an African-American or a Latina.”  The president pressed for Congress to “step up and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, so women have better tools to fight for equal pay for equal work.”  Occupational Segregation The pay disparity is due, in part, to women continuing to fill lower-paying jobs because of “occupational segregation.” The report listed the top 10 occupations women fill:  Secretaries and administrative assistants. Professional nurses. Elementary- and middle-school teachers. Cashiers. Retail salespersons. Nursing, psychiatric and home health aides. Waitresses. First-line supervisors and managers of retail salespersons. Customer-service representatives. Maids.  Male-dominated professions requiring a high school diploma or a bachelor’s degree or higher continue to pay more than fields with a high concentration of women.  For example, the three most common male-dominated jobs requiring a high school diploma—brick mason, tool and die maker, and plumber—provide average salaries of $45,410, $39,910 and $46,660, respectively. By contrast, the top three female-dominated jobs requiring a high school diploma—secretary, child care worker and hairdresser—offer average salaries of $34,660, $19,300 and $22,500, respectively.  Occupations are segregated by gender in professions requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher, the report added, and the male-dominated jobs are paid more.  The three most common male-dominated jobs requiring a higher-education degree—mechanical engineer, computer-control programmer and operator, and aerospace engineer—provide average salaries of $78,160, $71,380 and $97,480, respectively.  The top female-dominated professions requiring a higher-education degree—speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist and dietitian—provide average salaries of $66,920, $72,320 and $53,250, respectively.  Read more linked above

Since women occupy more lower paying jobs than men, even when the male has less education, isn’t that a form of disparate impact? Disparate impact is against federal Fair Employment Law. Raising the Minimum wage could seriously offset the $.77 to $1.00 female/male pay ratio.

If the GOP is against raising the Minimum Wage, the GOP accepts unequal pay with the reality of disparate impact on women. Some prefer use of softer language, but we call that a “War on Women.”

The war is also perpetrated against you and me. 

We shouldn’t be forced to live and experience the reality of the graphic just above. Your daughter, wife, aunt or Grandmother shouldn’t have to labor in lowering paying jobs while being paid a wage below the poverty level. They work in jobs with male co-workers possibly earning more for doing the same job. Many women work more than one job to simply help make ends meet.   

If 70 plus percent of survey respondents believe the Minimum Wage should be higher than $7.25 per hour and we are faced with what you have just read, how can anyone in the GOP say there is no “war on women” from the Right. 

Why is the party on the Right so out of touch with the wishes of the American people. 

SOLDIERS FOR PEACE INTERNATIONAL: SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

SOLDIERS FOR PEACE INTERNATIONAL

OUR MISSION IS TO JOIN INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS WORKING IN DIFFERENT WAYS TO ENSURE THAT OUR CHILDREN LIVE IN A RATIONAL, SUSTAINABLE WORLD. WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE ABANDON THE BELIEF THAT WAR IS INEVITABLE,IT WILL BECOME UNTHINKABLE. WAR IS CONDUCTED FOR CORPORATE EMPIRE. THEREFORE,THE FIRST STEP TO ENDING WAR IS ENDING CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE US GOVERNMENT. ALL SOCIAL JUSTICE EFFORTS LEAD TO THE END OF WAR, THE ULTIMATE INJUSTICE. THOSE WHO WORK FOR JUSTICE ARE SOLDIERS FOR PEACE.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 2013

SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

“…know the truth and the truth will set you free.” -John 8:32

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It is time that we honored his sacrifice by demanding that the truth be told about the circumstances of his death. There are important questions that have not been answered by the Warren Commission or the government. Knowing who killed Kennedy and why he was killed are two of the two most important questions to answer if Americans are ever going to trust their government again. The others are regard the extent of foreknowledge of 9/11 by US government and exactly how it used this inside information to launch its war of terror. This has served to hide from average Americans the fact that it is nothing but a war for corporate Empire. Knowing the answers to questions about Kennedy’s murder will go a long way toward answering questions about how and why 9/11 was used by the corporatocracy to advance the aims of Project for a New American Century’s plan for world domination. Until Americans understand this, they will continue to be ignorant of why it is critical to unite to take back their government.

It is disgraceful that 50 years after the fact, the Obama administration refused to release an estimated 50,000 pages of remaining documentsregarding its investigation into what could rightly be called the crime of the century. Unanswered questions about the murder of an American president are still sneeringly dismissed by the corporate media and politicians despite the fact that the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1978 that JFK was likely killed as the result of a conspiracy, one that neither the FBI nor the Warren Commission ever seriously considered. Fortunately, enough documents have been released and witnesses identified that the basic outlines of the conspiracy are clear, including the central role of the CIA.

For those who want to understand how Kennedy was killed, there are any number of books that present the evidence for various theories to explain the many aspects of the murder that were ignored or inadequately addressed by both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. For those who want to know why he was killed, they cannot do better than to read the meticulously documented JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass. He does a good job of highlighting some of the most important evidence. However, it is in his examination of the reasons that Kennedy was killed that he excels. His may prove to be one of the most important books in history, if its lessons are widely noted and heeded.

Thomas Merton defined “the unspeakable” is as “…an evil whose depth and deceit (seem) to go beyond the capacity of words to describe.” In particular, the unspeakable is truth that “too few are willing to see” because most of us are “eager to be reconciled with the world at any price” He argues that the price of turning from the truth of what Kennedy’s assassination means is a loss of the national soul and with it, any prospect for world peace. As persuasively argued in JFK and the Unspeakable and in a speech by Douglass outlining the argument, it was this quest for peace that led to JFK’s murder by those who profited most from a growing military-industrial complex that was already out of control by 1963.

Douglass traces the origins of the unspeakable to a 1948 National Security Council Directive authorizing the CIA to commit illegal actions under the doctrine of “denial plausibility,” or without leaving evidence of American involvement. This is what gives the CIA the ability to operate with little congressional scrutiny and to conceal information from or lie to the President, the press and the American people. He argues that by 1963, the CIA had assets in every branch of government, the military and corporations that formed the industrial part of the military-industrial-government complex. The CIA role in the Kennedy assassination is suggested by Truman’s remarks shortly after: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government . . . There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”

The guiding principle of CIA operation is that what is good for the transnational corporations that profit from military and economic conquests of resource-rich nations is in “American” interests. This has always been the case in American foreign policy, but never before had an agency of government been given so much power with so much autonomy. It was bound to lead to conflicts with any President who dared challenge the conventional wisdom of the Cold war or those who profited from it. After the CIA lied to him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy spoke of wanting to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.” This was the opening salvo in what became a covert war between Kennedy and every element of the military industrial complex from the CIA and military to the industrialists, bankers and politicians whose interests they served.

JFK and the Unspeakable counters the myth that as an unrepentant Cold Warrior, Kennedy could not have been the passionate idealist for peace that some have described him. This has been a useful lie, serving to divert attention from the real motivation for JFK’s murder and who carried it out and covered it up. The evidence now available clearly documents Kennedy’s change after the Cuban missile crisis. After facing the prospect of being responsible for a nuclear war that could have ended human civilization as we know it, he was transformed from Cold Warrior to Soldier For Peace, posing a direct threat to an established order that was based on endless expansion of corporate Empire. Douglass documents the profound transformation he underwent 

After staring down generals who had called for a preemptive nuclear strike during the missile crisis, JFK established continuing back door communication with Kruschev, negotiating the first ABM missile treaty and even proposing a joint US-Soviet space project that would have ended the space race that was a cover for the dangerous escalation of nuclear weapons. With Kruschev’s help began setting up a line of communication with Castro seeking normalization of relations that continued until the day of his assassination. He ordered plans for the evacuation of American troops from Vietnam, but military leadership stalled him until his death, after which LBJ cancelled these plans and escalated the war. In addition to these moves toward peace he challenged price fixing in the steel industry, converted the US to a silver standard to reduce the power of the Fed and seriously challenged Mafia power. Since the Mafia was an important source of CIA assets and the international banks controlled the corporations that profit from war, these too can be seen as part of his concerted effort to work for world peace. 

Finally, less than six months before his murder, Kennedy gave a little-remembered speech at American University in which he called for an end to the Cold War. Speaking about the common humanity of Americans, Russians, Cubans, Vietnamese and all people of the Earth, his speech was widely hailed in Russia, where it was front page news and a cause for rejoicing while being virtually ignored in the US media. 

JFK risked all in the pursuit of peace and was silenced as a result. He will not have died in vain if we keep his dream alive. It starts with believing peace is possible, even while acknowledging the tremendous forces that make it seem otherwise. Understanding the real story of his murder is an essential first step in creating a truly transparent government answerable to the People. The next step is to make other Americans understand it as well. We owe as much to Kennedy and the millions who have died in senseless wars in the belief that they were defending liberty. Most of all, we owe it to our children and generations to come to assure that the dream of liberty and justice for all does not perish from the Earth.

POSTED BY RICK STAGGENBORG, MD AT 4:16 PM