Sen. Udall gives thumbs up for equal pay unless he actually has to comply himself
Guess what PeakNation™, we must have struck a nerve. We haven’t seen this much dancing since seeing a cat tossed on a hot tin roof. Literal references aside, the hypocrisy of liberal Senator Mark Udall was on full display yesterday. Lynn Bartels of The Denver Post was all over it:
Udall told supporters in an e-mail that in Colorado “a working woman makes 78 cents for every dollar a male makes.” He said it’s time women earn equal pay for equal work [the Peak emphasis]
We, along with many other outlets, showed just how completely absurd this “78 cents” statistic is the other day. Basically, they took every full-time female worker in Colorado, regardless of job, industry, education, work hours, experience, job tenure, and averaged their salaries. They did likewise with every full-time male worker in Colorado. They then compared those two very basic numbers.
Well, we thought, if that method is good enough for Udall to cite repeatedly, then it’s good enough for us to judge his staff by. So when we looked at the last available pay period and compared all the salaries for Udall’s staffers who were with him for the entire pay period, we see that on average his female staffers make only about 84 cents to every dollar his male staffers earn.
This is how his campaign responded when confronted with this:
Udall’s campaign spokesman, Chris Harris, noted five of the senator’s BLAH BLAH BLAH, are women. His BLAH BLAH BLAH in Colorado — the state BLAH — is a woman. And the BLAH of Sen. Udall’s staff, top to BLAH, are women. And Harris said, men and women working the same BLAH receive the same BLAH.
“Mark believes that if two people with the same BLAH do the same BLAH, they should get paid BLAH,” Harris said. “He ensures the Senate office meets that standard by BLAH BLAH BLAH.” [some the Peak edits]
You know what those “BLAHs” in the above blurb are replacing? Context. The exact thing Udall leaves out every time he cites 78 cents. If he won’t use context for the rest of Colorado’s labor market, why does he feel entitled to context to justify paying his own female staffers 84 cents to every male dollar? President Obama had this to say to his critics yesterday:
“They say it’s a myth. But it’s not a myth. It’s math.”
See Senator, it’s the exact same with you: it’s math that says you pay 84 cents to your female staff. Don’t like it? Then don’t use the same tactic.