How jarring to see Katie Couric dredge up the “pay gap” canard in her interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Couric makes $15 million a year! Pretty good salary for a TV news personality who poses talking points from the labor/grievance caucus instead of coming up with her own informed questions.

That said, Couric’s line of inquiry is useful, more in depth about an employment issue than we’ve seen. Couric should have identifed the bill’s namesake, Lilly Ledbetter, who spoke at the Democratic convention and is now campaigning for Senator Obama’s presidential campaign, but still, a topic worth exploring.

From the CBS transcript:

Couric: The Ledbetter act sort of lengthens the time a woman can sue her company if she’s not getting equal pay for equal work. Why should a fear of lawsuits trump a woman’s ability to do something about the fact that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. And that’s today.

No, that’s not today, and that’s not the case. That premise repeats the usual invidious statistical sophistry used to justify all sorts of government laws, rules and programs. It has been debunked time and time again, as Couric surely knows.

As this testimony from Hudson Institute economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes, again:

Just comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly, without accounting for differences in jobs, training, or time in the labor force, yields a ratio of 88 percent.These wage ratios are computed from aggregate government data and do not take into account differences in education, job title and responsibility, regional labor markets, work experience, occupation, and time in the workforce. When economic studies include these major determinants of income, rather than simple averages of all men and women’s salaries, the pay gap shrinks even more.

A report by Jody Feder and Linda Levine of the Congressional Research Service entitled “Pay Equity Legislation in the 110th Congress,” declared that “Although these disparities between seemingly comparable men and women sometimes are taken as proof of sex-based wage inequities, the data have not been adjusted to reflect gender differences in all characteristics that can legitimately affect relative wages (e.g. college major or uninterrupted years of employment).”

And the Ledbetter act doesn’t not “sort of lengthen” the time you can sue, as Couric claims. It eliminates all statutes of limitations in certain employment suits. You could sue 30 years after the alleged incident under the proposed law, long after the alleged offenders have died or otherwise moved on.

Couric introduced the topic with this “gotcha” question: “Where do you stand on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?” How many people who aren’t members of Congress, their staff, or inside the Beltway types would get the reference? Palin did:

Palin: I’m absolutely for equal pay for equal work. The Ledbetter pay act - it was gonna turn into a boon for trial lawyers who, I believe, could have taken advantage of women who were many, many years ago who would allege some kind of discrimination. Thankfully, there are laws on the books, there have been since 1963, that no woman could be discriminated against in the workplace in terms of anything, but especially in terms of pay. So, thankfully we have the laws on the books and they better be enforced.

As a statement of principle, that’s a good one: Don’t discriminate, enforce the law.

And don’t write laws that turn into boons for trial lawyers.

For more, see these posts.

Today Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced the findings of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, using the report to knock the Executive Branch for its alleged failure to crack down on pay inequity. This report recommends:

that the EEOC and OFCCP monitor performance of enforcement efforts more closely and that the OFCCP implement a more rigorous data system to carry out its duties.

Clinton then tried to use this report to justify the Ledbetter bill :

We must hold the Bush Administration accountable for enforcing equal pay requirements already on the books and we must finally end the pay inequity that is short-changing women and families by enacting the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act,

How would passing a bill that removes the statute of limitations on discrimination claims make the Administration, any Administration for that matter,  more accountable for enforcing current law? This bill will only prevent the timely remedy of actual instances of unlawful discrimination by eliminating the filing periods needed to address real claims. 

Peter List at EmployerReport.com has put together a good list of legislation that could become law if the stars align on the left side of the political hemisphere after the November election. One could quibble, but all in all, it’s representative of organized labor’s electoral and then legislative priorities:

• Employee Free Choice Act (no-vote unionism and binding arbitration 120 days after unionization)
• Elimination of Right-to-Work states (making all 50 states forced unionization states)
• Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (eliminates statutes of limitations on pay discrimination claims)
• Healthy Families Act (mandates seven paid sick days for employers with more than 15 workers)
• Expanding FMLA to include parenting responsibilities (i.e., parent-teacher conferences) and literacy training
• Arbitration Fairness Act (eliminates PRE-dispute arbitration agreements)
• Public Employee-Employer Cooperation Act (unionizes EMS, Fire & Police at the local and state levels)
• WARN Act expansion to smaller companies
• ADA Restoration Act (expands the definition of disability)
• Protecting America’s Workers Act (increases penalties–to include prison time–for employers guilty of “willfully” OSHA)
• Legalizing undocumented workers…and, of course,
• Nationalization of America’s Health Care System 

(Hat tip: Jim Gray)

Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who took her employment discrimination case to the U.S. Supreme Court before finally losing, spoke at the Democratic convention in Denver last night. It was a standard convention speech — short, a statement of grievance followed by advocacy of legislation and praise for the candidacy of Sen. Obama. The remarks are here, and CQ Politics notes how other speakers cited her case. 

You can’t expect policy dissection in 90 seconds, and we’ll also just point to yesterday’s post, which lays out the anti-competitive, litigation-encouraging results of legislation that claims to fix Ledbetter v. Goodyear.

Oh, yes, we’ll also take credit for getting the convention to fix the misspelling of Ledbetter’s first name on the convention agenda. Yesterday, the incorrect Lily. Today, correctly, Lilly. Still wrong here, though. More…