Employment Discrimination
Employment Discrimination laws seek to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, and age. A growing body of law also seeks to prevent employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Discriminatory practices include bias in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, compensation, retaliation, and various types of harassment.
Cry Wolf Quotes
Although there may be some inequitable situations in an industry as large as retailing, it should be pointed out that there have been conscientious efforts made to correct them. Further, in many States the situation has been corrected through the enactment of equal pay laws.
To have any meaning at all, a comparison of wage rates must be based on the wages of employees doing at least the same kind of work. For example, if one includes the wages of both skilled and unskilled employees in determining the average rates for women and men, the sex having the greater number of skilled workers will obviously have the higher average wage rate. There are, of course, a greater number of skilled male employees than skilled female employees. Consequently, when average wage rates are compared without being limited to the type of work being performed, the comparison is not merely meaningless; it is totally misleading. The resultant differential between the average wage rates of women and men simply cannot properly be used to support an argument that Federal equal pay legislation is necessary.
[The proposal would] involve undue interference in the work relationship…interfere with efficient management, and prove disruptive to good relations between employer and employees.
The broadly and vaguely worded administrative and enforcement provisions of [the bill] would authorize extensive governmental intervention in labor-management relations far exceeding the purported evils at which this legislation is allegedly directed. Such provisions, moreover, effectively give the Secretary and his agents an unlimited license to destroy the wage structures which both management and labor have worked for years to develop….The exercise of such unlimited powers could not but grievously and irreparably injure labor management relations throughout the Nation.
Related Laws and Rules
Evidence
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The Americans With Disabilities Act Didn't Cause A Flood of Lawsuits
Employer warnings of frivolous lawsuits in the wake of Americans With Disabilities Act were proven false.
Resources
University of California-Berkeley Labor Center carries out research on labor and workplace-related issues.
National Committee on Pay Equity is a coalition working to eliminate sex- and race-based wage discrimination and to achieve pay equity.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research is a prominent think tank that is largely focused on American women's issues. This covers everything from pay equity to welfare reform to domestic violence.
