Oracle Women Score Major Win in Court Battle Over Equal Pay (bloomberg.com) 81
Three female employees at Oracle scored a major victory in court, gaining the right to represent thousands of others in a gender-discrimination lawsuit over pay, a legal milestone that has eluded women at other tech titans. From a report: A California state judge certified the class action Thursday, allowing the lawsuit to advance on behalf of more than 4,000 women who claim the database giant pays men more for doing the same job. "Whether the jobs at issue in this case are substantially equal or similar is a question of fact for a jury," California Superior Court Judge V. Raymond Swope in Redwood City said in the 25-page ruling, rejecting Oracle's claim that each is an individual case because people in the same job code don't perform substantially similar work. The ruling gives the women critical leverage in pursuing the case under the state's Equal Pay Act.
This is nonsense (Score:1, Interesting)
> rejecting Oracle's claim that each is an individual case because people in the same job code don't perform substantially similar work.
The judge is being silly here. All they will get employers to do by playing this game is to invent more job codes, one for each pay scale.
And yes, a Senior Dev doing machine learning is a lot different from a Senior Dev doing CRUD apps, and pay will have to reflect that if you want to get anyone actually capable of doing the job.
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Re:This is nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
How I read it was that the judge is saying that oracle's claim that the code alone determines pay grade is without merit, and that a jury is required to determine if two jobs are otherwise substantially similar.
That's a finding of fact so would always be up to the jury, the question is whether they represent a class. This requires that the facts are common, like for example that they've all been denied overtime pay. It does not mean every case must be exactly the same, some might be owed more or less but they all win or lose together. For example if it was about sexual harassment in the workplace it'd probably not pass as a class action, even if it was abundant it doesn't mean you specifically has been harassed.
Oracle argued that each woman's case must be argued individually, the judge said it's a valid class and you can go to trial collectively to see if there's a pattern of underpaying women. And that Oracle will be able to provide evidence in this case to argue that the difference is due to different job responsibilities, not gender despite having the same job code. I'm probably okay with this, it's hard to say if a single person is under/overpaid because it comes down to individual skills. Like not hiring one black person is maybe just being runner-up, not hiring any black persons is pretty blatant racism.
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Like not hiring one black person is maybe just being runner-up, not hiring any black persons is pretty blatant racism.
Why? It could be the case that no black person met the job requirements or that they were always outperformed by other candidates or that they were a tiny minority of the candidates for whatever reason. You cannot pretend that something that you deem improbable must be impossible: improbable things do happen. And, then, how do you define black? Is, say, Elizabeth Warren a native? According to someone she was. Law is based on a few principles and feelings are not among them.
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Personal growth? Fuck that.
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Presumably, a certain level of experience is required to qualify for any given job listing in the first place, so making pay a strict function of the job is actually in the best interests for everyone.
The question would then be are they discriminating against certain protected classes from being accepted for higher paying jobs at all?
Re: This is nonsense (Score:2)
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Your assumption the Senior Dev who is doing Machine Learning is a Male and the CRUD Developer is female?
Also you are setting up Class warfare between the Machine Learning devs and the CRUD devs. There is skill and methods in different types of programming. The Machine Learning team may be producing layers of crappy code making false assumptions (eg IBM Watson Healthcare, where they kept of collecting bad data to look at) while the CRUD Developers have made an infrastructure that allows the system to handl
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Re: This is nonsense (Score:1)
Ok to make it equal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, give the same amount of time off for single people so they don't have to work to cover the other peoples' asses when they are off doing 'family' stuff, you know?
When you do that, THEN talk to me about equal treatment and pay levels earned over the years worked.
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During that time off you will be required to sleep 4 hours a day, and be really busy. You know just to keep it fair.
Re:Ok to make it equal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, if you CHOOSE to have children, then you need to be prepared for the sacrifices that come with them (time and money).
Those that choose not to have kids, shouldn't have to sacrifice for YOUR kids and choices.
You know, we kind of need children, right? (Score:2)
They're not just the future, they're the future earners. Our entire economy is built off them, and those of us that don't have them are effectively leaching off the ones that do.
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those of us that don't have them are effectively leaching off the ones that do.
I don't get tax breaks that people with children do. Some of the taxes I pay directly subsidize children whose parents can't afford to support them. I pay a fuckton of property taxes that pay for schools. Tell me, how the hell am I a leech?
You're leaving the hard part of creating and raising the next generation to others. The financial cost is the easy part... and you're only paying a tiny, tiny part of that.
It's about $1800 a year (Score:1)
In exchange for that $100k she'll make about $1.5 million more over her lifetime. But she only gets to do that because a) I had the mo
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In my single hey day I often wasn't getting 4 hours of sleep, and I was out of my mind on top of that. I raise your no sleep with getting fucked up.
You know, just to keep it fair.
Re:Ok to make it equal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than petition for lighter hours, men have overwhelmingly chosen to work longer hours to get fatter paychecks and be first in line for promotions. Nothing today discriminates harder against women than their own personal life's choices.
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You could ask why men choosing to leave raising their children to women. If you ask women I'm sure most of them would prefer if the father did more.
I'm not blaming men by the way. One of the most common reasons is that the father earns more so it makes sense for them to keep working on full pay.
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Because nature has differentiated men vs women and made women (in general) better suited for raising children.
Men can never breastfeed....and women have different emotional make ups than men, making them more empathetic, etc...caring.
I think I ever read that women can hear different sound frequencies better than men, that seem to coordinate with the sounds small children make when crying or needing attention.
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I think a lot of guys would be insulted to be told that they were just inherently inferior patents.
Anyway, even if it was true it doesn't make any real difference to who collects the kids from school or who takes the baby to get vaccinated.
Quit repeating that lie. (Score:3)
That's a giant fallacy that's been repeated by man hating feminists. Men are extremely empathetic and caring, else they would not sacrifice and give so much to their wives and children. Women are more receptive to nurture small infants, and more physically capable (lactation and all.) so it's easy to twist this into something it's not. Remember, whenever there's any kind of emergency, it's always "women and children first". Men are always the first towards trouble, and ready to sacrifice themselves for
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The reason the father earns more is because the woman decided to have children with a man that earned money. The reason the father works longer hours and aims for promotion is because he is now supporting 3+ people instead of just himself. If you asked men I'm sure most of them would prefer to spend more time with his family.
I'm not blaming women by the way. One of the most common reasons is that the mother was attracted to a man she thought would be successful (a good choice) so it makes sense that she wou
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"I'm sure" = "I'm wrong". While most women would naturally want more help than less help around the house, it's very far down the priority list compared to money. Most women see earning potential as one of the most important factors in mate selection, whereas a broke woman with no marketable skills can still be a mother, and most men don't mind supporting a woman who raises the kids while he works. It's a tradeoff as old as the species, and likely older.
Women, generally, do most of mate selection, theref
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How about we just tax people like you to fund women who are making the next generation of sprogs that will help fund your retirement.
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Having children is a CHOICE that people make.
I you choose to have kids, then you need to be ready to sacrifice for them...make sure you can afford them, fiscally and with your time.
A company should not have to pay for your choices in life.
Single people or childless couples should not have to cover for your choices by their time or pay either.
If you choose to have kids, m
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Having children is a CHOICE that people make.
I you choose to have kids, then you need to be ready to sacrifice for them...make sure you can afford them, fiscally and with your time.
A company should not have to pay for your choices in life.
It's not a matter of whether single people should have to suffer for the choices of people with kids. Rather, it's a matter of whether the company values hiring people with kids. If the answer is no, then don't give any benefits that favor people with kids. After, people with kids aren't a protected class. Many companies simply realize that a very large portion of the available pool of qualified workers happen to have kids, and these companies find it advantageous to tap the larger pool of workers. 60% [bls.gov]
Re:Ok to make it equal... (Score:5, Insightful)
In Canada, they do. Most of my (male) colleagues have taken parental leave. It's not really 'time off' in any meaningful sense, though. They're working, they're just working on having a kid.
Being single/not having kids is its own sort of freedom, and honestly, I don't need the extra time off to feel like I've got the better end of that deal.
But yes, by all means, make parental leave laws/company regulations considerably more inclusive. Make pay equal. It's not actually such a big ask.
Re:Ok to make it equal... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most progressive countries do have completely equal access to parental leave.
For single people there are employment laws that protect them from having unreasonable amounts of work heaped on them. If the company doesn't reduce the workload or take on temporary staff they could be in trouble.
West Coast IT Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
I have noticed a big difference between West Coast IT and East Coast IT.
East Coast Development staff seems to have more women. My Particular Department is 50/50 split between men and woman. This seems a bit odd to the West Coast IT Companies, so they just don't know what to do when there is a Woman who is doing IT work.
Also there is a lot of useless Brogrammers trying to prove their Alpha Male status which most women don't get involved in.
Re:West Coast IT Culture (Score:4, Informative)
East Coast Development staff seems to have more women.
My anecdotal experience is that the West Coast has more immigrants and H1Bs working in tech, and they are mostly male.
Also there is a lot of useless Brogrammers trying to prove their Alpha Male status
This isn't a tech thing. It is a human thing. It happens in all professions and, if anything, it is less common in tech.
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Also there is a lot of useless Brogrammers trying to prove their Alpha Male status which most women don't get involved in.
Well someone needs to lord over the Beta Testers to keep the entire departmental hierarchy from upending itself and bringing ruin on everyone.
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Also there is a lot of useless Brogrammers trying to prove their Alpha Male status which most women don't get involved in.
Well someone needs to lord over the Beta Testers to keep the entire departmental hierarchy from upending itself and bringing ruin on everyone.
Can we just threaten them with gamma radiation instead?
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For the most part.
Brogrammers are also the guys not afraid to speak to girls the same way they speak to men and are not afraid to tell the girls "You screwed up and broke the build/introduced a major bug/did not follow design specs/did not follow QA testing procedures so your job is now to FIX IT!" when they screw up, as opposed to the typical male Betagrammer response of "You are a strong and empowered woman by not following procedure. No need to worry, I will spend Friday evening and most of the weekend
Excellent (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately it's almost impossible to prove pay discrimination on a 1:1 basis for anything other than factory work - no two people do exactly the same job, and you can run around in circles forever trying to prove that the claimed differences aren't just post-facto justifications for the pay difference.
If you've got a systematic pay difference for a given job title though, then there's really only two options:
A) you're underpaying women for substantially the same job
B) You're discriminating against hiring women for the higher-paying jobs.
Either one is a problem that needs to be fixed.
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If you're comparing two System Engineers you have a point hence my comment about
no two people do exactly the same job, and you can run around in circles forever trying to prove that the claimed differences aren't just post-facto justifications for the pay difference.
You would certainly not expect all System Engineers to be equally valuable, and so paying them the same isn't necessarily a good thing (though there's conversations to be had there.)
However, if you're looking at 500 System Engineers across the company then, in the absence of gender discrimination, selecting them by gender should provide you with a representative sample, and you would expect the pay distribution for each gender t
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Jury will not be able to evaluate job complexity (Score:3)
To a typical person a coder is a coder. The jury will not be able to differentiate the complexity of the work and the demand for a specific skill set.
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That's up to Oracle to demonstrate. If language X pays less in the market than language Y, Oracle should provide that evidence, for example. HR should do that analysis anyhow in setting salaries. If they are guessing out of their ass, they are doing it wrong and deserve the fallout from their sloth.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Those good at coding often get promoted into management where they don't really belong. I don't know if that's the case, but it's often a factor.
Call me a skeptic. (Score:2, Informative)
Good luck finding a jury that's not biased in this day and age, not when so many morons still believe the 70 cents on the dollar myth that has been repeatedly debunked.
If anyone is into history, look up the Bolshevik revolution and what the catalyst was that led to the following century of misery and and 100+ million d
And now the bad news (Score:4, Funny)
The list of women entitled to additional pay and benefits is being maintained in an Oracle database. Licensing and software customization costs have eaten up the whole judgement.
Get My Groceries (Score:2)
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I haven't made the "same" as everyone else since I was bagging groceries as a kid. Don't people at such higher-skilled jobs have to negotiate their salary? It wouldn't surprise me if females were generally worse than males at such negotiations; they're uncomfortable situations at best. Most of my increases involved threatening to leave.
Jordan Peterson says the same thing - woman don't negotiate for pay and positions like men do. He coaches them to be successful this area. For years I changed jobs every couple of years, always for more money. Employers must know you know your market value and will not accept less.
The old saying is "What do you feed someone that will eat shit?"
Equal pay is a smoke screen (Score:2)
Basically we've all had our pockets picked of tens of thousands of dollars and the women folk are fighting over some scrap
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take out executive pay and it's off by around 3-5%. Substantial, but that can be accounted for by the breaks women take to have kids. Meanwhile wages overall are down 20% from their peaks in the 70s (real wages, inflation adjusted) and that doesn't take into account that necessities (food, shelter, education, transportation) have increased at far, far more than the rate of inflation. Basically we've all had our pockets picked of tens of thousands of dollars and the women folk are fighting over some scraps. It's a wedge issue, oldest trick in the book when you're trying to divide a working class against each other.
So true. I'm a huge fan of the phrase "we are the 99%". 99% includes liberals and conservatives, all races , all creeds, religious and atheist, great people and not so great people. Obtaining economic improvement requires putting petty tribal squabbles aside and focusing on economics. We are the 99% does the most good for the most people. Equal pay for women does not since its impact is limited to half the population. Minority groups are less than half so they accomplish even less good on aggregate.
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Meanwhile wages overall are down 20% from their peaks in the 70s (real wages, inflation adjusted)
Sigh. Let me guess, you don't have a source for that, and we should just "google it". OK. According to Pew: [pewresearch.org]
...today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
...After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978
A graph [wikimedia.org] from FRED, which shows that except for 1973, real wages now are roughly equal or greater than what they were in the 70s. I realize there's a lot of ways these things can be calculated. But even if you compare just 1973 to today, the most extreme calcs would result in around 8-9% down, not 20%.
You're obviously trying to tell some sort of story, one that (surprise) has nothing to do with
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Meanwhile wages overall are down 20% from their peaks in the 70s (real wages, inflation adjusted)
Sigh. Let me guess, you don't have a source for that, and we should just "google it". OK. According to Pew:
As much as I hate to support OP, you actually do get pretty different numbers depending upon the source you use.
The Pew numbers are clearly looking at household income - and there isn't a lot of difference when you run the numbers yourself if you accept some of the standard measures of inflation and compare household income numbers from 1970 to 2019.
But there are a lot more households with two parents working today than there were in 1970. Two-parent households where both parents work full-time today make
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As much as I hate to support OP, you actually do get pretty different numbers depending upon the source you use.
Great! Let's see you support his 20% claim with some of your own sources.
The Pew numbers are clearly looking at household income
Huh? No, the Pew numbers for wage growth (or lack thereof) are using BLS data for production and nonsupervisory employee nonfarm payrolls, not household income. It clearly says so below their wage growth graph. The FRED wage growth graph appears to use the same data.
[claims based on false assumption about Pew data]
[claims based on assumption that Pew used the "wrong" inflation measure]
[claims about poor people migrating]
[claims about retirees]
You make a lot of claims there, and you've cited ZERO readily available sources.. So if you're trying to support rsilvergun's 20% claim, you've failed pretty miserably
Now I wonder if there is equal work too. (Score:2, Interesting)
Because as far as I know, the unequal pay comes from both women not wanting to drive as hard a bargain when discussing salaries (which is true for many men too, e.g. for me, but who cares when it's "just men", right?), and from simply working less (like fewer hours) due to certain situations (like how we let women have some free time to care for their newborn child, but don't let men have some time with their kids too).
If they managed to drive a harder bargain now, I applaud that, but wish it was solved in
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Men should also be able to apply for equal pay under this ruling. It should not only be for women. Women are able to get this additional leverage because they have already won the war in the battle of the sexes in first world countries. So they will get special treatment whenever they want as a general rule. It is no longer equality they are fighting for. It is superiority.
One way street (Score:3, Insightful)
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It is harder for men to work in child-centric professions out of fear of child abuse. In other words, it's a stereotype that men are on average more horny and fuck anything that moves or has holes. Whether true or not, an individual is judged on that stereotype.
The Pay Differences (Score:3)
Equal pay for equal work? (Score:2)
Or is this just one more case of how women demand "special treatment" just for being a women who shows up for her 9-5 shift like the men?
Other Salaried Employees (Score:1)
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But don't they know what 95% of Slashdot knows? (Score:2)
There was sexism and racism and other bigotry from the dawn of time until approx 1990s, then we solved it utterly and completely.
Now anybody complaining about the above is wrong, possibly communist, definately SJWs.
Trannies solve this problem (Score:2)
Before this becomes a problem at your company, offer your best male programmers 5% raises if they'll start identifying as women, with surgery and hormones optional. Only a transphobic bigot would sue a company whose highest-paid employees are trans-women!
You mean they are 'seers'? (Score:2)
inequality general among humans (Score:2)
But then I still wonder, isn't i