Sorry, girlfolk, your equality is getting in the way of my ideology
Also over at No Right Turn, and no doubt other places I haven’t checked yet in my evening’s blog-reading! From the Granny Herald:
The Government has axed two investigations aimed at improving the pay of women as it tries to save money by controlling public sector salaries.
The inquiries were aimed at female social workers at Child, Youth and Family, who are paid 9.5 per cent less than their male colleagues, and at inequities in the pay of mainly female school support workers.
Ooooooooooooh boy. I’m definitely going to be breaking open a beer after this one.
State Services Minister Tony Ryall said the investigations would “generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment”.
I just … can’t really do this justice. Women are being paid less than men for doing the same jobs in the public sector. But fixing this issue would (um, duh) cost money. So knowing there’s an issue there, the Government is going to do nothing, because they’ve decided to keep wages generally low in the public sector.
Except for their press secretaries, of course.
I can get behind the idea of examining wage levels and keeping an eye on costs as we’re facing financial hard times. But this isn’t Give Us A Pay Rise Because We Wants It, Precious. This is women being deliberately paid less than men for doing the same fucking work. This is the kind of fucking pay discrimination that people just LOVE to tell me “doesn’t happen in our country, not these days, I mean, why WOULD someone pay women less just because they’re women?”
YOU FUCKING TELL ME, TONY.
And it just wouldn’t be a complete Piss Off Queen of Thorns Bingo without this precious piece of bullshit:
All new contracts with the sector’s estimated 45,000 staff will have to be done in “fairness to the taxpayer”.
I DON’T KNOW WHY THIS NEEDS EXPLAINING, TONY, BUT THOSE WOMEN WHO YOU ARE DICKING OVER? PAY FUCKING TAXES TOO. They’re paying more for fucking petrol. They’re paying more for fucking food. They’re a helluva lot more FUCKING affected by economic circumstances than YOU or your we-can-has-anonymity party donors.
Sexism, folks. Just another thing that ain’t so important when the Right gets its turn in the hotseat.
ETA: More at The Hand Mirror.
Heir Apparent of ETA: And at frogblog.
Ideologically Impure 
Th’r prbbl pd lss bcs th’r mr ncmptnt.
[QoT: Did you come up with that all by yourself? Enjoy your disemvowelment.]
I agree they should be paid the same as male social workers. Taking babies away from their natural parents who abuse them is very stressful work and underpaying somebody for doing it is wrong.
Jack
Slight oversimplification of the social worker’s role there I think, Jack.
Yes, I’m a simple fellow, but whatever they do, take children away from men to addict women, or vice versa, whatever, they need to be paid the same as men. Its unfair.
disclosure as a child we had a social worker visit our house, we hid and mum and dad let on to be a loving couple. It was a standout day for us.
Jack
… Good for you?
mr ncmptnt?
I think you mean “lss cmptnt”.
dt.
Nicely spotted, felix.
Yeah, well someone has to keep an eye on this shit or we’ll have town hall clocks running backwards and cats laying down with dogs.
Great post btw.