A Woman’s Lifetime Earnings Lost To Pay Gap Could Feed A Family Of Four For 37 Years

[HiPointDem]

78. Yes, they're going to hire the woman, but it could just as easily be an h1b male or anyone else

who's willing to work for less -- including a man. And often *is,* for example, in the auto industry, where young men and women in the "second tier" work for half of what their fathers and mothers did.

I ask you, other individuals taking it to court when they notice that supervisor X (male) is doing the same work as coordinator Y (female), how do you challenge such practices as in your example on the basis of "gender equity"? Since the employer is deliberately doing it covertly -- and *not* to "discriminate against women" as a class, but to drive down *men's* wages?

It's not about gender, it's about capital as a class grinding and whipsawing *all* of labor with all the weapons in their toolbox.

Any variety of worker will do as well as the "scab," so long as they'll work for less. Why is the woman taking that coordinator's job for that low pay? How is the man taking the supervisor's position doing anything different than she is? He doesn't make the rules of employment, he doesn't set the pay scale, and since the woman has demonstrated she's willing to undercut his wages, she is more his "enemy" than he is hers -- when the situation is analysed in gendered terms.

So long as we keep focusing on our own little interest groups, so long as we're still pretending it's 1950, labor will continue being ground into the dirt.

Where are all the feminists as teachers (predominately women) are fired at will and have their benefits stripped? Some of them are cheering -- I've seen it here at DU.

What is whipsawing in labor relations?

It is playing one labor group against the other. Basically, management saying to Labor Group A, "Labor Group B will do it for less money, so you must take a pay cut or else I will shift the work to them."

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_whipsawing_in_labor_relations

But typically, management doesn't tell labor what they're doing. They just do it & if it becomes obvious they make up some justification.