Letter: Fair Pay Act is like tilting at windmills

Posted 3/18/21

In the March 4 Phoenix , State Rep. Susan Donovan and Kelly Nevins (who?) urged us to leap for the nearest phone and ask our legislators to support the Fair Pay Act. I cannot find a bill on the …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Register to post events


If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here.

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

Day pass subscribers

Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.


Letter: Fair Pay Act is like tilting at windmills

Posted

In the March 4 Phoenix, State Rep. Susan Donovan and Kelly Nevins (who?) urged us to leap for the nearest phone and ask our legislators to support the Fair Pay Act. I cannot find a bill on the General Assembly’s agenda by that name.

Rather, a press release from the Assembly, “Senate passes bill to address wage gaps,” (dated March 3) refers to legislation similar to Massachusetts’s Fair Pay Act, currently entitled “Fair Employment Practices,” which Rep. Donovan is now sponsoring in the House.

Their letter having appeared already in February editions of the Providence Journal, the Cranston Herald, and presumably elsewhere, either Rep. Donovan or Nevins might have reread it and tinkered with the boilerplate for clarity, assuming that citizens should research the bill for themselves before asking their legislators to support it.

Where we Bristolians are concerned, if Sen. Jim Seveney’s support is a fait accompli, and Rep. June Speakman’s a forgone conclusion, then the letter’s urgency and request are superfluous; but it maintains its value as a virtue signal.

Both press release and letter showcase the same factoid ritually invoked as unshakable proof of the gender wage gap: a woman makes 82 cents for every dollar a man does (or women make 18 percent less than men). This statistic overlooks different choices men and women make though working “comparable jobs” (including chosen specialty, hours worked per week and lengths of leavetime) which better explain the discrepancy in pay than blanket claims of prejudice.

But suppose the wage gap is a real social phenomenon as described to us. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was inadequate to address it. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 didn’t keep Obama who signed it from shortchanging his own female staffers. So what favorable result is expected from re-litigating something so tenacious, except to keep the government expanding?

If our legislators really cared to raise the income of female breadwinners, rather than comfortably shadowbox feminist myths, they might have at least harrumphed at former Gov. Gina Raimondo’s pandemic overreach, which pressed many women into financial hardship. Every job is “essential” for those whose livelihoods depend upon it. And executive “emergency powers” are a bigger threat to our quality of life than any disease.

Meanwhile, blissfully unoccupied with the checks and balances of our political system, Rep. Donovan passes the time joining Nevins to tilt at misogynist windmills. If this behavior is the result of local Dems picking Chairman Erich Haslehurst’s brain for guidance, I entreat them to desist. (Rep. Donovan, Rep. Speakman, if you pick at it, it’ll never heal.)

Rep. Donovan’s coauthored letter is the sort of obtuse, sententious, time-serving pap that we’ve come to expect from our political class in lieu of real advocacy for our inalienable rights, e.g. our right to assembly. Forget the Fair Pay Act and other tinsel bills. The pandemic only highlights and exacerbates our state’s need for strong conservative leadership.

Zachary Cooper
Bristol

2024 by East Bay Media Group

Barrington · Bristol · East Providence · Little Compton · Portsmouth · Tiverton · Warren · Westport
Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.