Topic: CNSNews.com
A June 30 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas begins:
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.
That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.
That's a false conflation of issues. Lucas provides no evidence that women in Obama's office are being paid less than men with the same amount of experience doing the same job -- which is what the issue of pay equity is all about. All Lucas did was compute the average pay for male staff vs. female staff.
Lucas also provides an incomplete account of the case of Lilly Ledbetter, whom the Supreme Court ruled against in a pay equity case. He wrote that "The court said that under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an employee must sue within 180 days of a decision regarding pay if alleged discrimination is involved," but didn't note that the issue in the case was that Ledbetter didn't know of the pay disparity until 18 years after the initial decision was made.
Newsmax reprinted Lucas' article.
