Is it really surprising that one of lawyer Barack Obama's top priorities has the effect of goosing the fee universe for trial lawyers? All to further the dubious politically correct goal of gender pay equity and the related socialistic concept of "comparable work".
Let me address the latter point briefly: we have a President of the United States whom makes roughly $400K dollars a year, yet according to Executive PayWatch, the average S&P 500 CEO earned $14.2M. One could hardly compare the skills and scope and impact of duties, overseeing trillions in budgets and assets. Yet the Obama campaign machine raised around $700M to ensure the election of an unqualified, inexperienced leader. Billionaires (e.g., H. Ross Perot) have sought the post, and another billionaire, Mike Bloomberg, is trying to change city rules to enable him to run for a third term as mayor of New York City. You could make a similar comment about the responsibilities of enlisted recruits in the military whom start off roughly in the range of $15K but experience job demands and risks far beyond others in the private sector.
The private and public sectors are fundamentally different. There is no effective competing market for public services; however, job security and benefits are usually a premium selling point. One consequence, for instance, in the face of unemployment climbing over 7%, is that military enlistments are up after reaching a crisis point during a particularly bloody period in the Iraq occupation in 2006 following the terrorist bombing of a key Shiite mosque. Nevertheless, job cuts and layoffs are less frequent in the federal vs. state/county/local sector. In addition, the military sells recruits on how unparalleled exposure to sophisticated high technology and other market-coveted knowledges and skills can give them a leg up in the competition if and when they transition to the private sector, not to mention generous education benefits.
Many statistics, including those published by the Federal Reserve, show that gender differences have been rapidly declining, as young women now outnumber men in college enrollments and have raised their proportional participation in well-paid professional occupations, such as information technology, the law, and medicine, and I've seen certain statistics that, in fact, single women are starting to outearn their male counterparts in certain markets. Nevertheless, there are some differences, such as mothers with young children suspending their career or taking a lower profile, reducing their hours.
In an efficient labor market, employers practicing discriminatory labor practices are at a competitive disadvantage as other employers are more than willing to poach well-qualified females or minorities for better career opportunities and more equitable salaries for their performance. However, it's still incumbent on the job holder to make sure he or she is being compensated at a fair wage relative to the market, and note that some employers do not pay the going rate. For example, I once went on a campus visit (academic job interview) at a private Catholic university, Providence College; I was told if an offer was extended, it would be for $35K. In contrast I had been offered salaries up to 50% higher elsewhere. When I worked at Market Knowledge, I was knowingly making at least 15% below market, but it was my favorite place to work; within 6 months I was the production DBA working on our original and biggest client account responsible for nearly a third of our revenues, and I was reporting to one of the company's co-founders (whom recommended to the CEO my promotion to his position when he resigned from the company). [Phil is a true techie whom gets up early in the morning to work on creating computer games; at MKI, his role had evolved to dealing more with customer relations, and he wanted to get back to the basics of tech work.]
Ms. Ledbetter sued her employer, Goodyear, after almost 20 years of work and filing for her pension, alleging past supervisor discriminatory actions (beyond the typical statutory 6-month to up to 1 year limit). Ms. Ledbetter did not file any grievance at the time of the alleged discriminatory actions, and the former supervisor is deceased, unable to contest the allegations. Ms. Ledbetter held the company responsible for the effect said actions supposedly had on her compensation and demanded the cumulative difference of that effect through the remainder of her tenure, claiming she qualified under statutory time limits because each paycheck during her last year was in fact a discriminatory act.
Obama and the Democrats (whose special interest groups include trial lawyers and radical feminists) want to overturn the Supreme Court decision against Ledbetter, which essentially held that Ms. Ledbetter's argument did away with the very concept of a statutory limit. What's the purpose of a grievance procedure if an employee ignores it and hence the company cannot review the full evidence within a timely period and make any due corrective action? Instead, the company finds itself forced to defend itself indefinitely with unavailable witnesses or relevant data. This is inherently unfair to the company; if the company's higher management has a manager violating anti-discrimination policy and relevant employees do not step forward, it does not have grounds for terminating or demoting the supervisor--and have a serial offender on its hands, increasing its legal vulnerability.
The Democrats are attempting to pay off their special interest group support by attempting to further micromanage private sector human resource decisions and attempting to substitute socialistic principles in place of economic ones underlying labor supply and demand. This does nothing to further the concept of individual worker responsibility, and there are already megatrends in play, with increasing numbers of talented female business owners and managers. In an information age where word of unfair labor practices can circulate instantaneously across the Internet, unjust employers will find themselves unable to attract the talented workers they need for long-term survival.
The legislation is a bad idea; employees will have less incentive to report discriminatory actions in a timely fashion, and businesses will be exposed to additional frivolous lawsuits and reporting, recordkeeping and other costs associated with implementing the revised rules and regulations. It is really more of a boon to trial lawyers looking to intimidate companies into settlements with fat legal fees. Whereas the legal profession serves an important role in a functioning democracy, I submit that we spend a disproportionate amount of resources in legal services, and too many of our talented young people are attracted to that vocation vs. broadening the array of American goods and services in an increasingly competitive global economy.
