Senator Kamala Harris has put forward a proposal to heavily fine large companies that have even a small gender wage gap problem.
If a company cannot obtain an “equal pay certification” it will be fined 1 percent of daily profits for every 1 percent of a gender pay gap. There will be an option to explain that some employees have more experience and work harder than others. I can imagine explaining that obvious fact to a government bureaucrat would not be much fun.
Patrice already has explained why this plan won’t work (here).
But now the Free Beacon has revealed a workplace that, if it were a company, would face potential fines under Senator Harris’ plan: Senator Harris’s Senate office and campaign staff.
The Free Beacon reports:
Analysis found men were paid a higher median salary than women both in Harris’s Senate office and on her campaign.
In her Senate office’s most recent six-month disclosure, covering the period from April 1, 2018, through Sept. 31, 2018, the median male salary disbursement was $34,999 and the median female salary disbursement was $32,999, leaving women with just 94 cents of every dollar paid to men.
The gender pay gap for the previous six-month period, during which the median male salary was $27,167 and the median female salary was $25,749.97, was a nearly identical 6 percent.
The pay gap was even greater during the first full month of Harris’s presidential campaign in February—the median female salary disbursement for the month, $5,763.97, was about 87 percent of the median male salary disbursement, $6,632.23, a further analysis of her campaign filing found.
The Harris campaign came closer to gender pay equality in March, when the median female disbursement was about 95 percent of the median male disbursement.
As with previous Free Beacon gender pay gap investigations on politicians such as two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and current presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, only staffers employed for the entirety of the pay periods were included in the calculations.
It is unclear based on the available information whether men and women were paid equally for equal work—both Senate offices and campaign are required only to disclose how much money is disbursed to individuals, not details such as annual salaries or hours worked.
A spokesman for Harris’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the gender pay gaps in her Senate office and on her campaign, and whether either would be granted “equal pay certification” under her proposed system.
In her proposal, the burden would be on companies to prove they are not discriminating based on gender.
Read the entire article.