Tag Archives: Fair Labor Standards Act

Did You Know That Today Was “Equal Pay Day?”

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Equal Pay Day is a day invented by those who still believe that women are paid less than men.

A website called nolo.com reminds us:

A federal law, the Equal Pay Act (EPA), requires employers to pay men and women equally for doing the same work — equal pay for equal work. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963 as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act and can be found at 29 U.S.C. § 206. Although the Equal Pay Act protects both women and men from sex discrimination in pay rates, it was passed to help rectify the wage disparity experienced by women workers, and in practice, this law has almost always been applied to situations where women are paid less than men for doing similar jobs.

If you are a woman who believes you are being paid less than a man for equal work, you have legal recourse.

Today The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The gender pay gap in Sen. Elizabeth Warren‘s (D., Mass.) office is nearly 10 percent wider than the national average, meaning women in the Massachusetts Democrat’s office will have to wait longer than most women across the country to recognize Equal Pay Day.

Last year, Senator Warren tweeted out the following:

Evidently, the rule of equal pay does not seem to apply to Democrats:

“The game is rigged against women and families, and it has to stop,” Warren continued. “It is 2016, not 1916, and it’s long past time to eliminate gender discrimination in the workplace.”

Historically, 1995 was the last year where the national pay gap was comparable to the 2016 gap in Warren’s office, according to data collected by the group that founded Equal Pay Day.

Warren is far from the only politician who pays women less than men.

Most notable on the list is failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who paid women less than men first as a senator, then as secretary of state, and as a presidential candidate. Her campaign viewed her tendency to pay women less than men as a campaign vulnerability.

Former President Barack Obama regularly spoke out about the gender pay gap, but women working at the White House were paid less than men.

Also paying women less than men were Democratic Govs. Jon Bel Edwards (La.), who last month held an “equal pay summit,” and Andrew Cuomo (N.Y.), who has signed two executive orders this year to eliminate the wage gap.

It seems odd to me that the political party that makes such a fuss over women’s issues accepts the fact that some of its leaders choose to ignore the law that say women should receive equal pay to their male counterparts.

Why Government Regulations Matter

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Today’s Wall Street Journal featured a story by Rhea Lana Riner. Mrs. Riner founded Rhea Lana’s in 1997. It is a consignment company for secondhand children’s clothes. The company began in her living room and soon expanded. In 2008, the company converted to a franchise model and now has 80 locations across 24 states.

The article at The Wall Street Journal explains what has happened to the business in the past two years:

Rhea Lana’s operations are similar to more than a thousand other consignment event businesses in the country. Our locations host two sales a year, each running two to eight days. Before a sale, consignors list their clothes and toys on our website, along with their asking prices. On the day of the event, they bring the items to the location and set them up for display. Consignors keep 70% of the proceeds.

They can also volunteer before and during the event—doing everything from setting up display racks, to checking out customers, to helping buyers carry heavy purchases to their cars. As a perk, volunteers are allowed to shop before the general public, and they are sometimes given preferential treatment on display locations for their own items.

But such mutually beneficial exchange is apparently a foreign concept to the federal government. In January 2013 the Labor Department audited our employment practices. Four months later the bureaucracy concluded that our volunteers are actually “employees.” As such, we were told that we were in violation of Sections 6 and 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act regarding minimum wages and overtime pay. I was told this during a face-to-face meeting, without any accompanying written complaint or advance notice of allegations.

This is a business that helps mothers buy beautiful clothes for their children at reasonable prices. The business model includes volunteers. These volunteers are in no way coerced into volunteering–they are people who want to help who may not be able to commit to the regular hours of a job.

The article further explains:

The case raises questions about what it means to volunteer in the 21st-century economy. Some—including, apparently, the Labor Department—believe it is illegal for a private business to receive an ounce of help without providing financial compensation. But as our business model shows, there are situations in which volunteering is mutually beneficial, even without money changing hands. Besides, if someone wants to spend a weekend helping families find affordable clothes and toys, why on earth would the federal government stop them?

If a friend of mine opens a store and I volunteer to paint the walls for him, am I breaking a law? This is clearly an example of government overreach. Hopefully the courts will eventually decide this in the right way, but it is a shame that the government has chosen to harass  Mrs. Riner for her efforts to help make children’s clothes more affordable.