Equal pay for women is ‘bad for families’ and society, a Utah lawmaker says
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The Utah state Capitol is pictured Monday Jan. 23, 2017, the opening day of the 2017 session in Salt Lake City. Scott G Winterton AP
By Kristine Guerra
The Washington Post
In a letter criticizing a bill that addresses pay gap in the workforce, a Utah Republican said that men have traditionally earned more than women and, citing “simple economics,” argued that things should stay that way.
James Green’s letter to the editor, published in two local publications earlier this week, immediately prompted such outrage that within two days, Green had written an apology and resigned from his post as vice chair of the Wasatch County Republican Party.
Green said in his letter, published Wednesday by the Park Record and the Wasatch Wave, that men make more than women because they’re “the primary breadwinners” of their families, and paying women equally would somehow ruin the makeup of a traditional family where “the Mother” remains at home raising children.
“If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ, simple economics,” Green wrote. “If that happens, then men will have an even more difficult time earning enough to support their families, which will mean more Mothers will be forced to leave the home (where they may prefer to be) to join the workforce to make up the difference.”
And having more women in the workforce would create competition for jobs, “even men’s jobs,” Green wrote. That will, in turn, lower the pay for all jobs and force “more and more Mothers” into the workforce, he argued.
That’s “bad for families and thus for all of society,” Green wrote. “It’s a vicious cycle that only gets worse the more equality of pay is forced upon us. It’s a situation of well-meaning intentions, but negative unintended consequences.”
Green’s comments were directed at Senate Bill 210, which would make changes to laws related to employee pay in the state. The bill, authored by state Sen. Jacob Anderegg, a fellow Utah Republican, would commission a study on whether there’s a pay gap between male and female workers in the state. It would require certain employers to adopt a uniform criteria that will be used to determine whether someone should get a raise based on performance, and would create a pay index that states the average pay range for each occupation based on years of experience.
SB 210 was introduced on Monday.
Shortly after its publication, Green’s letter was met with a sharp response.
State Rep. Tim Quinn, a Republican who represents Utah’s 54th district, which includes Wasatch County, denounced the comments and distanced himself from Green. Wasatch County, with a population of a little more than 29,000, is located about 100 miles outside of Salt Lake City.
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I always figured that his kind of thinking was as dead as the dodo. You've got to wonder how people like that can even exist in modern times, let alone get elected/appointed to positions of responsibility (even if it was only county GOP vice-chair). -"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?
This illustrates perfectly why the Republican mantra is always to push more down to the states. There are two main reasons for this: the one shown here which I willl get to in a minute. The other is that the republicans at the fed level can always say with some degree of truth that they have cut expenditure and therefore taxes. The more you shove down to the states and counties the less there is to pay for at the federal level - therefore I have cut your taxes.
The other reason is more sinister and Machiavellian. We are all busy (for example, one of the hidden costs of the healthcare system is the amount of time we all spend in filling out fucking forms or dealing with some dimwit in a cubicle at the insurance company who is paid to obfuscate, delay, clog, and generally be a total twat so that we eventually conclude that life is too short and we really have better things to do than seek the payments of our own money - I digress) and keeping up with what is happening in DC (I speak here for life in USA but I am pretty sure that the same applies in Canada and Europe and Australia) takes most of our time. I could tell you who is the governor of our state but my local councilperson (is that what they call them here???) is a mystery to me. I think I saw the mayor's name on a sign once. What I am getting at is that if I wanted to be a corrupt road builder or property developer who plays fast and loose with the codes and cuts corners I would do it at the local level because no-one is watching. They didn't get Spiro T Agnew for what he did as VP but for his screwing the taxpayers of Maryland. The more they push down to local government the more opportunities for graft petty and gross.
As if happens, what I do is to determine the dangers of chemicals to the environment. If someone wants to sell a wonder fungicide that kills all manner of slimy nasties in, say, the paper manufacturing industry, someone much like me has to make sure that it does not also kill fish, shrimp, worms, birds, small furry mammals and children. We do this so that XYZ Big Chem Company can say to the feds that MiracleFungusKiller has no (or at least limited) unintended side effects. If EPA stops doing this and devolves this down to the states as promised by Dampnut, then my company will have 50 times as much work and I will be rolling in $$$$$ and have a job for life. I personally and professionally will benefit from this. But I am smart enough (doesn't take much) to see that this is a terrible waste of resources.
Who do women think they are, wanting equal pay to us men people? When they can do equal work to men they'll get it!! How many women do you know that can donate sperm?
I had years of lower pay and I never found it to be good for women.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
