pay equity

$7.25/Hr Minimum Wage Vote

#AZ House Republicans Pass $7.25/hour Minimum Wage for Students (video)

by

The worst vote of the 54th session has to be the Republican passage of the sub-minimum wage on Thursday. Rep. Travis Grantham’s HB2523 would allow employers to pay full time students, who work part time and are under 22, the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, instead of the voter-approved minimum wage of $11/hour. Republicans and … Read more

Patricia Arquette was not malicious in her backstage comments, but she was mistaken

by

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

patricia arquette

I cheered right along with Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez when Patricia Arquette made an impassioned demand for women’s rights and, specifically, pay equity in her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress last Sunday. And then she was interviewed backstage and said some other things:

“So the truth is, even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are applied that really do affect women. And it’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

The part in bold is what several people took to social media to express their offense over at what they perceived as the erasure of women from “gay people” and “people of color”. Others immediately came to Arquette’s defense, claiming that the hysterical PC police were bashing her unfairly over words perhaps poorly chosen in the midst of an exhilarating and emotional moment. I agree that it was most likely not Arquette’s intention to exclude non-cis/straight and non-white women in her comments but the women in those groups have a lot of experience having their identities and concerns ignored, even by well-intentioned white women. And when they point out that you’re doing that, it’s rude (to say the least) to become defensive and double-down on the denials, as Arquette and her defenders have done since Sunday.

But set that aside for a minute and examine the problem, on its merits, with her “call to action”, as more than one of the people defending her to me described it to me. And that is that her claim was wrong. Factually wrong. Gobsmackingly so.

Read more

Doug MacEachern is having none of your Equal Pay Day!

by

Someone told me recently that they knew AZ Republic columnist Doug MacEachern well and that he’s nothing like how he seems in all his columns, in which he channels your angry Birther uncle chain emailing conspiracy stories from World Net Daily and Newsmax all day long. I’m not sure why it matters if he’s sincere or not since the resulting output is the same and he is being paid a newspaper columnist’s salary to do it, but I thought I’d let you know that.

Speaking of pay, Tuesday was Equal Pay Day – signifying the additional amount women have to work this year, on average, to earn what men earned, on average, last year. MacEachern is (or is pretending to be) very testy about Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and Councilwoman Kate Gallego marking Equal Pay Day by announcing a plan to ensure gender pay equity for city contractors.

Read more

AZ Reps. Grijalva and Barber Back Extension of ERA Ratification Deadline

by

by Pamela Powers Hannley

Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has received bipartisan support in the Arizona Legislature, but Arizona's Congressional delegation appears to be lagging behind. Of Arizona's 11 Senators and Representatives, only two–  Southern Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva (D- CD3) and Ron Barber (D- CD2)– have signed on to co-sponsor legislation to remove the ERA's ratification deadline.

There are two Congressional bills to remove the ratification deadline. In the House, HJ Res 43 has 104 cosponsors (including Grijalva and Barber), and in the Senate, SJ Res 15 has 34 cosponsors.

The ERA was introduced during every Congressional session between 1923 (when it was originally proposed) and 1972. It finally passed Congress nearly 70 years after it was originally introduced. In the 1970s, there was a ground war at the state level to get 38 state legislatures to ratify the ERA in order for it to become a Constitutional Amendment. The ERA fell 3 states short of ratification; Arizona is one of a handful of states that never ratified the ERA. (Contact and Twitter info for Arizona's Congressional delegation after the jump.)