Are Republicans closet communists? If not they should pass the Lilly Ledbetter Act ASAP! A picture is worth more than a thousand words...1,652 to be exact in this article. On January 21, 2015 Steven Garnett posted on Facebook a picture captured at the last State of the Union Address by video or some other process showing a passel of Republican congress people reacting to President Obama as he told them they should pass the Lilly Ledbetter Act. I could not find yesterday the picture on Steven Garnett’s Facebook page at https://facebook/backdoor.draft?fref=photo, but I have it preserved on my Facebook page. In order to fully appreciate the article that follows you really should see Steven Garnett’s picture, available on my Facebook page at https://facebook/richard.stapleton.397, to get the big picture. Take a good look at those Republican characters in the picture, elected to one of the highest offices in the land, pretending the equity theory of management does not exist—a principle asserting people who produce the same should be compensated the same, and people who produce unequally should be compensated unequally. The men look like a gang of sheepish naughty schoolboys who had been caught red handed stealing cookies from the cookie jar, and picking on girls, sitting there in their drab coat and tie uniforms, trying to look innocent, with no affect or animation, as joyful excited well-coiffed women among them wearing bright colorful dresses stand up and clap for President Obama as he again tells Congress in his fifth State of the Union Address that congress people should pass the Lilly Ledbetter Act mandating equal pay for equal work for women. Its absurd President Obama should have to tell them this again, for many reasons. One reason I have not seen or heard mentioned in any medium is that only communists believe productivity is irrelevant as a wage and salary determinant. Only communists believe the needs of individuals should be the main determinant of wages and salaries. As Karl Marx put it, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, which is what employers are doing today in the US in the case of women, when in reality in todays US capitalistic system employers should be using this rule, From each according to her/his abilities; to each according to the value of his/her production. Republican politicians tout themselves as exemplars, promoters and defenders of free competition and capitalism, yet in this case they are acting like a gang of communists. In my opinion the equity theory of management should apply to students in classes, to players on ball teams, and to workers in any productive group or organization; but not so, according to these characters, in the case of grown women competing with men for money in gainful employment throughout the US. They apparently think women are special, so special they should be excluded from wage and salary equity considerations. How could these characters live with their consciences if they perpetuate this travesty? Well, it seems the answer has to do with religious beliefs, specifically what these characters perceive to be the religious beliefs of people who vote for them. They apparently think their unfair behavior, denying women equal pay for equal work, will please their constituents and help them get reelected, implying their constituents are also closet communists. They would probably have you believe as a defense they voted against equal pay for women because their faith made them to do it; and they would have you believe this morally takes them off the hook, making them not responsible for their inequitable inhumane legislative actions. These actors in some ways are like the Taliban in Afghanistan, religious fundamentalists who think they have a divine right to lord it over women, having no responsibility to answer to anybody for their religious beliefs. Yet, anyone not believing in equal pay, grades, and rewards for equal achievement and productivity, or unequal pay for unequal work, is treading on thin ideological ice in current US culture. This disagrees with basic tenets of free enterprise and capitalism and agrees with communistic tenets. Communism entails people being compensated based on their needs rather than their contributions. Fundamentalists voting against equal pay for equal work generally consider themselves believers in free enterprise, open competition and capitalism. Why then would they consider it proper to reward men more than women for equal work? Well, for one thing they must think men have special needs, more financial burdens in families, and the like, and therefore men should be given special help, a form of welfare, by governmental laws, or a willful governmental denial of laws. Do Republican politicians voting against equal pay for equal work secretly believe in communistic tenets? If so if they want to set up a communistic system in the US wherein certain people receive higher incomes than others not caused by higher productivity, they should put this in writing, making their intentions clear to everyone by proposing new laws overtly stating the incomes of citrizens should be determined by needs, not productivity. Most US fundamentalists say they believe Christian dogmas and doctrines. Some say they believe every word printed in the King James bible. In it Jesus taught employers should pay workers what they were worth, with no mention of discriminating among males and females. He also said it was permissible to pay one worker more than another for equal work based on different needs, so he too apparently believed in both capitalistic and communistic tenets. Everyone knows Jesus had a very low opinion of human greed, making money, and getting rich, especially money-changing. He clearly warned people about accumulating too much money, asserting it significantly lowered their chances of making it into heaven. He said rich people ought to give everything they had to the poor and follow after him, wandering around the country visiting, praying with, and preaching to people who would provide them meals and lodging in return, giving no thought to enriching themselves, living simply and naturally like lillies in the field—which seems a bit communistic. I think it’s fair to say Jesus preached income equality. Most fundamentalist Republican conservatives also oppose raising the minimum wage so employers can pay unequal wages and salaries to both male and female workers producing equal work, based on the needs of workers of different ages. Some believe adolescents living at home with their parents working part time should be paid less per hour than others regardless of their hourly productivity, another communistic notion. Wages and salaries paid to individual employees at most levels in corporations are not made public, to protect the privacy of employees, but also to insure employees cannot compare their incomes with others to make sure their compensation is equitable, applying the equity theory of management. In most organizations where employed people are paid money you will find an unspoken rule that employees should not talk about their compensation with fellow employees. Some states, such as Georgia, publish the salaries of individual university professors and employees in auditors reports once a year that are made available in libraries, but most employees and citizens do not pay much attention to them. I decided to look my salary up at one point in my career and compare it with my peers, and I was astounded by the comparisons. In universities with merit raises salaries can become inequitable through time for many reasons, as can wages and salaries in corporate hierarchies, applying the equity theory of management. Consult my book Business Voyages, a business bible, at amazon/Business-Voyages-Schemata-Discovering-Co-Constructing/dp/1413480810/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417627216&sr=1-3&keywords=richard+john+stapleton, for more elaboration and documentation showing how seemingly small differentials in yearly percentage-based merit raises can exponentially explode through time creating ever-widening salary inequities, a process analogous to what is happening among economic classes in the US today. In the case of state universities administrators generally race ahead while long service professors are left behind. On the other hand, most sports fans pride themselves on being able to remember the number of touchdowns, yards gained, tackles, baskets, assists, and other contributions football and basketball employees make on professional teams and how much they are compensated. Sports customers are inundated with such facts published in newspapers and magazines, on TV and elsewhere, and they pay attention to them, considering them to be relevant and valuable, however inequitable the sports compensation salaries might be relative to the wages and salaries of we the people. Some professional athletes and coaches, and some college coaches, now make more money per year than some corporate CEOs, receiving several times more monetary compensation per year than the President of the United States, the Chief Executive of some 3 million civil service workers, and the Commander in Chief of some 2.25 million military workers, as I also discussed in Business Voyages. But scores, contributions, production, achievements and compensation for most employees in capitalistic societies are generally hidden so most people have no way of knowing how contributions relate to compensation. Better to keep employees in the dark than to have them constantly bickering about their inequitable pay. Only professional sport corporations and industries provide open competition with real-time result transparency for employees and spectators. You dont have to be a woman to get screwed at work when it comes to compensation based on contributions; but no doubt about it, women getting paid on average 30 or so percent less than men doing the same jobs, when the quantity and quality of their production is the same or better, is an absolute travesty. This is one travesty that can be eliminated by merely passing the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Republican congress people need to man up, as they say, vote with their Democratic colleagues, and get it done ASAP. Richard John Stapleton is an emeritus professor of business policy, entrepreneurship and ethics who writes on business and politics at Effective Learning Company at effectivelearning.net and on his Facebook page at https://facebook/richard.stapleton.397.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 07:54:02 +0000
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