Bill wouldn’t help gender pay ‘gap’

Published 9:56 pm Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is getting some undeserved heat for vetoing House Bill 950, a bill that would have expanded lawsuit options for women who feel they’ve been discriminated against in the workplace.

The truth is the governor’s veto is appropriate and is a rare example of government minding its own business and keeping out of the relationship between employers and employees. When Texans brag about the “Texas miracle” of job creation and business relocations, it’s this kind of hands-off approach they’re really talking about.

HB 950 had little to do with actual discrimination — more precisely, a perceived wage gap between men and women — and more to do with lawsuits.

“The measure — authored by state Rep. Senfronia Thompson and carried in the Senate by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth — allows for more time for employees to sue employers for discrimination, providing a window beyond the current 180-day period following the original pay decision,” the Houston Chronicle explained last week. “It also would allow victims of wage discrimination to seek restitution in a state court”

They can already do so in federal court.

That’s why Perry’s critics are wrong when they blast him for being “anti-woman.”

Davis claimed the veto is part of a “concerted effort to attack and erode women’s rights and quality of rights… Once again the governor has made women’s health and women’s rights a target in an effort to bolster his own political standing.”

That’s wrong. It’s misreading what the bill actually would have done, and it’s missing the point of Texas’ business-friendly environment.

Workplace discrimination is a bad thing. But there are already plenty of laws in place (once since 1963) that mandate equal pay for men and women.

On a more fundamental level, work and compensation are things that can — and should — largely be determined by the marketplace. In Texas, a “right to work” state, compensation is a matter decided by an agreement between two parties — the employer and the employee. No one has to take a job; no one has to stay in a job.

The oft-cited statistic that “women make 77 cents for every dollar men earn” is misleading, and simply doesn’t apply in this case.

First, studies show that statistic is a myth, because it doesn’t take into account jobs — just wages.

“The real gap isn’t between men and women doing the same job,” the Atlantic reported last month. “It’s between the different jobs that men and women take… A new survey from PayScale finds that the wage gap nearly evaporates when you control for occupation and experience among the most common jobs, especially among less experienced workers.”

Second, there’s nothing in HB 950 that would had alleviated any such gap, in any case.

Texas remains the nation’s leader in job creation and business climate precisely because it doesn’t burden companies with needless regulations, just because other states do.

Perry’s veto will help keep the Texas economy friendly to both employers and employees, at a time when jobs matter more than ever. In the long run, everyone — including women — will benefit.