Dear Harriet Harman,
Obviously you still haven’t grasped the naivety of your adherence to the mythical notion of equality. As I said in the ‘Why I write these letters’ page on this blog, sometimes you have to accept that people are not equal. No-one on this planet is ‘equal’ to anyone else - we are all different. I agree that men and women doing the same job and doing it equally as well as each other should be paid the same, but your new Bill that pretends to champion equality is actually just an intrusive and inappropriate piece of rubbish.
You seem to believe that forcing companies to disclose differences in pay between men and women will help matters and you also plan to ban ‘gagging clauses’ that prevent employees from talking about their salaries and bonuses. What a load of rubbish. Just because Labour think that the City discriminates against women, you’re going to force companies to publish the bonuses they pay their employees. What right does a government have to expose bonus structures? How dare you intrude on private financial arrangements between individuals and employers. Apparently you want to compile league tables to see who pays the highest bonuses in the City - what will this achieve? Bonuses reflect a whole range of issues in a company (e.g. company performance, company size, last year’s bonuses, individual performance etc) and a high or low bonus in itself tells you nothing and will do nothing to help stop discrimination. Did it ever occur to you that women might be paid less in the City not because of discrimination, but because men might have more experience in certain fields or might have been in the City longer than their female counterparts or might be attracted to different industries or professions? Even forcing companies who compete for government contracts to disclose the average pay of men and women will achieve absolutely nothing. What if women are not interested in working on public sector contracts, making the companies male-dominated? Should companies be punished for this?
As John Cridland from the CBI rightly pointed out, average salary figures are nothing more than “symbolic figures which are out of context and confuse people” and that “raw figures were meaningless”. Too right. Let’s say a company competed for a government contract and you found out that the average pay of women is £30,000 and the average pay for men was £35,000. What does this tell you? Does it prove that discrimination has taken place? Does it prove that women are treated unfairly? No, it proves sod all. There are many explanations for different salary packets that have nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination.
Honestly, what utter ****. Discrimination between different people doing the same job just as well as each other is not acceptable, but looking at company salaries and inferring discrimination without the slightest shred of proof is a completely barmy approach to this issue. I would happily welcome any attempt to make sure that discrimination is minimised or prevented altogether, but this legislation will cause nothing but anxiety, stress and disruption for everyone.
Yours disrespectfully,
A.Tory
11 responses so far ↓
Bill Quango MP // June 26, 2008 at 6:15 pm
And she won’t even publish her own ‘expenses’.
The key Age discrimination is a total non starter.
Already she exempts free bus passes as they are clearly a perk to the elderly.
Insurance industry seem concerned. Rightly so.
Insurance is about risk, not equality.
A whole policy devoted to IF CANDIDATES ARE TOTALLY EQUAL IN ALL RESPECTS…
When does this ever happen?
So if there are exemptions then erm.. they are not equal.
A more useless statement I have not had to sit through since the last AGE discrimination crap legislation that meant workers with long service lost all their perks, such as first to choose a holiday date, 1st choice of assignments etc. They had equal status to the newest youngest worker.
experience is nothing, equality is everything.
We are all equal .
Communist bollocks dressed up as radical thinking.
So in one day ..
criminal checks for all adults
equality for England
Wind farms for everyone
Anonymity for none.
time for bed.
D.G. Macleod // June 26, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Is this yet another example of Government statistical lies being used to drive forward policy and lazy journalism failing to challenge the figures?
At the moment its being reported as a fact that for every pound earned by a man eighty seven pence is earned by a woman and this is evidence whitediscrimination. Now if this is a matter of averages then its absurd because of the large number of women in part time work. They are not comparing like with like. Why do no journalists ask how these figures trotted out by Ministers are arrived at?
As for making young white males the only group in society that can be legally discriminated against I can’t think of a better recruiting agent for the BNP . A bill that threatens to be a huge disaster for business, race relations, and, indeed, relations across the generations. Its also very bad news for the Labour Party as white working class males are part of their traditional support.
asquith // June 26, 2008 at 8:12 pm
There is also quite widespread age discrimination: I’ve explained why I regard the “working tax credits” as utter bilge. Now I’ve found out that someone, working full-time for the minimum wage, gets in excess of £40 if he is over 25, nothing whatsoever if he is younger.
Regardless of family situation, tenure or anything else. Who the hell dreams this up?
They charge £40 a week in tax & give £ 43 in tax credits. Better not to bother taking the tax at all, thus saving admin costs.
If these strikes involve people from the DWP/Inland Revenue, Brown should tell them not to bother coming back, simplify the system, & give the money back as tax cuts to low & medium earners, & public sector employees such as teachers who do something vaguely worthwhile.
It is a bugbear of mine because I’m under 25… though I like to think when I’m old, I’ll have the same concern, & won’t degenerate into one of the things were better in my day brigade.
There is no justification for the tax credits system as it is: the few good ideas contained in the whole package can be better enacted in other ways.
asquith // June 26, 2008 at 8:13 pm
They also punish single, childless adults. But surely if people can’t provide for the children, they shouldn’t sodding well have them. What message does it send to a youngster whose parents depend on the state, who grows up in a deprived area getting the worst of everything?
Letters From A Tory // June 26, 2008 at 9:47 pm
DG, absolutely right. The BNP will make a big deal out of Labour openly and knowingly discriminating against white men. For the government of this country to put in place measures whereby women and ethnic minorities are prioritised above white men is absolutely awful. Naturally, the Conservatives and Lib Dems daren’t speak up about this.
Age discrimination is everywhere we look, but the government seem to be saying that some forms of age discrimination are ok whereas others are not on the basis of an entirely abitrary boundary that seems to suit those in charge both financially and electorally.
Blue Eyes // June 26, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I think the Labour party has just lost it, totally. I can think of several examples of where this legislation would cause exactly the opposite of what it is trying to. They are just bonkers and trying to get as much fantasy socialism through before they have to sit on the other side of the House for another twenty years.
asquith // June 27, 2008 at 7:47 am
Yes! That’s what it is, arbitrary. There’s no reason on earth why people are more deserving, by virtue of having hit their 25th birthday. I can understand subsidising families with children, but it’s bad because it encourages people to have children to provide for (with the evil mentality that encourages), & also because it’s just sticking plaster covering the reality of low-paid jobs, poor education, unemployment & the litany of utter shyte we all know about.
You may have noticed that this is my hobby horse. Pity my workmates, as they have to listen to this relentlessly… but then, they all agree, & I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t. You included
Shiney // June 27, 2008 at 10:39 am
I run a small manufacturing company - a dying breed in the UK, in no small part due to ludicrous government policies such as this.
We have more women than men in senior positions and they are there on merit, and paid accordingly. In addition, we have roughly equal numbers of men and women on the shop floor and a large age range. Our workforce is ethnically diverse (in the context of the area in which we are located).
All our people are paid based purely on their skill levels and the job they do irrespective of age, gender or any other factor. We offer training opportunities to all those who want to progress. It would be economic suicide for us to do otherwise.
I find this sort of legislation insulting as it assumes that male WASPs like me in senior positions don’t make rational economic decisions - it is typical madcap socialism.
Economic necessity will drive equality - especially where there is a profit motive!
Shiney
PS - Oh wait, I’ve just realised what I’ve said. Perhaps those in the public sector don’t make rational economic decisions because there IS no profit motive and need legislation to force them to make the right choices.
asquith // June 27, 2008 at 10:58 am
Excellent post, Shiney. I have made no secret of my opposition to “positive” discrimination, considering it to be bilge.
There is a problem of underachievement among ethnic minorities, women… and poor whites. But that will only be solved by extending opportunities so that they can become qualified, & then will be able to compete on equal terms in the market.
I find it offensive to assume that people who belong to X group will never be as well qualified as the already priviliged, so we should make allowances for it. It’s as if we accept inequality of oppurtunity & try to deal with it, rather than challenging it.
This government is in love with putting sticking plasters over everything.
For example, they pay subsidies to people in low paid jobs (especially if they have f**k trophies) as a way of saying “You can never better yourself, so we’ll give you handouts while you remain poor & powerless in a dead-end job”.
Whereas in fact, they can better themselves… or could, if there weren’t so many barriers in their way.
You could say that I support achieving socialist ends (or, at least, what the socialists claim to support) through liberal means
Stu // June 27, 2008 at 11:13 am
asquith, I think you’re wrong about children. In pretty much every way. That’s about all I can say on that.
As for age discrimination, though… It’s impossible, in a practical sense, not to discriminate based on age in many circumstances. Are we saying that you shouldn’t ask for previous experience when hiring for a skilled job, for fear that you are discriminating against young people? Is it age discrimination that I can no longer get on a bus because it’s full of old people travelling for free? Is it ageist that OAPs get cheaper cinema tickets? Can Wimbledon really hold a ’senior’ tournament along with the main one, and exlude younger players from playing in it?
asquith // June 27, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Stu, what I’m saying stems from my conviction that the “child poverty” “debate” is dishonest. I know that many children are financially, socially & in all kinds of other ways deprived. I myself come from a family whose income is well below average, & grew up on a sink estate where many were far worse off than us.
But in the end, it is adults who are poor, not children. They are let down by poor education, lack of opportunity, & barriers to taking up what opportunities there are, such as the low expectations all too common in this country.
Redistributing money towards people in low-paid jobs, (if they have children but not if they don’t), is not going to solve anything. What we should be doing is equipping people so that their labour will command a high wage in the market. We need this for our future as a nation in a global economy.
The potential for prosperity exists, but it will never be achieved through the methods being used.
The age discrimination that I refer to is that certain benefits, in and out of work, are arbitrarily paid to people over 25 but not those who are younger… no reference to their circumstances, only their age.
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