Question: If we were all unionized would this change unequal pay for equal work?

[Taverner]

It's clear as day that women make between 50-75 cents on the dollar (for men) for the same exact jobs. This one of those lingering statistics that flys in the face of anyone who says everyone is equal today.

However, if every job was unionized, that would mean if you work at the same job for 5 years, you get the same pay as someone else who did the same job for 5 years.

On the surface it would seem as if it would change it, but I know nothing is this simple...

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. I believe that if we were all unionized, the focus would be on where corporate money is going

Which is a good thing and keeps corporations on their toes.

I do, however, think that the corporate problem has gone way beyond that to a corruption and a lack of true patriotism that confounded me (but no longer does - corporations and those who run them have no allegiance except to profits).

Corporations sell us products which they don't manufacture here. They have taken jobs out of this country, so our country has very few jobs.

[jeff47]

2. At worst, it would provide a helpful framework.

Unionization would provide a framework in which to address the problem. On the flip side, it would also reduce some of the incentive to really excel in one's field. Today if you're really good, you can get paid more. If everyone with the same level of experience is getting paid the same, then the financial incentive to excel is gone. There would probably have to be a lot more flexibility in management handing out titles so that the people really good at their jobs could get a 'higher' title faster and thus get paid more.

Also, be a little wary of some of those surveys. Often they consider jobs the same just by title, and not years of experience on the assumption that experience is baked-in to the title. That assumption isn't true - one of the trends in business is to reduce the number of titles and thus a wide variety of experience gets stuck into a single title. One "Senior Software Engineer" may have 6 years experience, while another has more than 20. Same title, but the latter is far more valuable and thus far better paid.

With a statistically-significant number of women taking time off for child-rearing, that cuts down on experience. Good studies will match experience as well as title to correct for this. And they still show a gap.

I don't know how much of that gap is pure sexism and how much of that is other factors (time off, less aggressive in career, etc). Addressing the issue will depend on what exactly the cause is, and I'm not sure anyone's done sufficient study to slice-and-dice the information such that root causes can be found.

[tech_smythe]

8. I find politics the main reason I havent excelled in my jobs...

Ask clients and most of my co-workers at my last real job - I was very good.
Ask the higher ups - i was horrible.

If we had had a proper union (somehow the company side-stepped that part of the law) I would not have gotten fired because overall I was doing my job very well.

After all isn't the customer the final arbiter?

IIRC Women have been in unions for better than 40 years now.
Has that helped or hurt the equal pay cause?

It just seems to me, at least in this economy, the person who can lie and bullshit the best, gets the better pay no matter the gender.

[Nikia]

3. It would help the same title, same experience pay discrpancy

That has been explained by women not being aggressive enough in negotiations and gender bias. There is also the issue of what various job titles should be paid though. Some occupations have significantly more women or men. Most "men's jobs" are paid more than "women's jobs". There is some evidence that some of that difference is based on gender bias rather than education or skill required.
At some companies, employees for high pay, high skill, but less physical jobs are required to work at a heavy lifting position for a certain amount of time regardless of whether this teaches any skills necessary for the higher paid job. Although some women can handle the physical limits, they may be less likely than the average man, who has a biological edge with testosterone to build muscles quicker. Supervisors may also not hire them for those positions in the first place because they don't believe that they will be able to handle the lifting requirements. In a post, a few years, I got slammed for saying this but I have male aquaintances say the same thing and I have met a few women at my current workplace who applied for heavy lifting positions at my former workplace, who should have been very well qualified but were not hired. I don't think that this is an isolated phenomenon.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Where do you get those kind of percentages "for the exact same job"

those sound more like the aggregate numbers.

[LadyHawkAZ]

5. Would it change? Yes.

Would there be less pay inequity? Almost certainly. Would the inequity disappear? Doubtful. Unions are run by people, shop stewards are people, the officers handling grievances are people. There's always going to be the occasional fool who gets voted into a position of power and drops the ball on the grievances. The USWA local that I belonged to had that problem. But: Is it a better system than not having a union? YES YES YES!

[leftyohiolib]

6. is it clear as day? i realize it used to be true and it's on the anecdote list.

but is there any recent proof to that claim? i'm in the cwa and i believe in equal pay for equal work. however, as i understand it any woman making less pay for equal work can correct that thru the lily ledbetter act. so what am i missing?

[Neoma]

7. Women don't know how much less they're getting paid.

They're not told, that's what's missing.

[leftyohiolib]

9. then how DO we know this is true

if womyn dont know theyre being screwed who is giving us the data that says they are?

[Neoma]

10. Salary surveys.

Edit: Also the bureau of labor statistics.

[leftyohiolib]

11. thanks

[CreekDog]

14. that's a good point --because with a union, compensation is allowed to be discussed

whereas often in nonunion settings discussion of compensation is not only discouraged, sometimes it's prohibited.

[leftyohiolib]

12. this will not make any one happy

Computerworld - Men are making more money than women in technology jobs, about 12% more than they did last year, according to a salary survey by career site Dice.com.

The survey found that salaries for men increased by 2.4% in 2007 but stayed flat for women. The average salary last year for men was $76,582, and for women, it was $67,507, according to Dice. The gap widened last year: In 2006, the difference between salaries paid to men and women was 9.7%

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9060098/Tech_pay_gap_between_men_and_women_grew_last_year

a little good news if youre in some place called oceania

Geographically, income disparities are most pronounced in Asian higher-income and Latin American/Caribbean countries, with gaps of 87% and 81%, respectively. Oceania falls at the opposite end of the spectrum, with women out-earning men by 7% in this small sample (n = 74).
http://spie.org/x84575.xml

[Neoma]

13. Doesn't surprise me.

My husband and dad are both computer programmers. Female programmers are rare, though I'd love to do it...

[CreekDog]

15. I think it would help because pay scales are set

and the scales are generally for classes of occupations and jobs.

where i've worked, where places had set scales for job classifications, it seems like there was more equity.