Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business.
Medicare would be strictly a tax program, forcing wage earners to pay a substantial in their payroll taxes to finance hospitalization for everyone over 65, including those who are wealthy and millions of others who are already protected with hospital insurance.
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 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.
The enactment of any equal pay legislation will add hundreds of employees to an already inflated Federal payroll and hundreds of thousands of dollars to an already astronomical Federal budget.
If my company were compelled to raise all of our female rates in this plant to the male rates in question, it would seriously jeopardize the competitive position of this plant with its competitors located in other states employing all females in these jobs.
[Consider] the possible impact of this bill upon efforts to equalize wages in plants employing mostly women and relatively few men. If there is a wage differential between men and women that cannot be justified under the restrictive standards of this bill and the wages of the male employees cannot be reduced, a plant could run into serious financial difficulty if it were forced to increase the pay of all female employees to the level of the few male members.
Members of the Council of State Chambers of Commerce do not argue with the principal of equal pay for equal work. However, they have consistently advocated and endorsed a policy of home rule. State legislation on such subjects is preferred to Federal legislation whenever practical. Twenty-two States have enacted equal pay bills. This in itself…indicates that States can adequately cover this subject, and no need exists for additional Federal legislation.
[T]he act will tend to cause labor unrest and labor disputes and disrupt collective bargaining agreements. In virtually every industry of any size, [employees] are represented by a collective bargaining agent which has negotiated an agreement with the employer covering rates of pay and conditions of employment.
The principal of equal pay for equal work sounds…simple [but]….We cannot ignore the variables inherent in our private enterprise system, or give all discretion in resolving them to some single group or agency such as the Department of Labor, if we are to continue as free men and women.
