Feminist Ginsburg

This week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did something very unusual. When the court decided that there should be a limit on the amount of time a woman could wait to sue a company for pay discrimination, she read her dissent aloud and urged Congress to strengthen laws protecting women in the workplace. Good on her!

I can see where she might have just had enough from the eight old men who serve with her. I'm afraid I couldn't have kept quiet, either.

Corporate America is very good at keeping wages secret from their employees. The company I worked for paid their employees the way airlines charge for seats. A different rate for each person. And, it wasn't necessarily based on the length of time the employee had worked there or a reward for exceptional work. Those cute little Performance Reviews for people in the office were actually more revealing than they realized, because they had 5 categories and the supervisor checked the category he though the employ fell into.

Number 5 meant, "get rid of this employee, NOW". Number 4 was "he/she's lazy, but also never complains about his pay, so we'll keep him/her in reserve so we'll have someone to lay off at the next belt tightening." Number 3 was "ho-hum" and most employees fell into this category, especially the women in the office. Number 2 was good, not great, and was pretty much reserved for the men. Number 5 meant, "strike up the band, this guy (and I do mean guy) walks on water." Nobody ever achieved a number 5, because if anyone in the rank and file was that good, he'd be a threat to the managers.

As secretary to the manager at our factory, I was in a position to know more about salaries than most of the others in the office. I got to see all of the Performance Reviews, and noticed the inequities where the women were concerned, and the outright gifts to the men. So, I got to wondering about my own position in the scheme of things. And, you really don't want to get me wondering.

I had gotten pretty chummy with my counterpart in another town, and we were bemoaning our pitiful raises one day, when she mentioned that she knew her raise was smaller than the Executive Assistant with the same job description as hers in another town. Executive Assistant, you say? When did your title change? Well, she said, she knew J in St. Louis had received an upgrade, so she marched into her boss's office and demanded the same treatment - a couple of years earlier.

Now, I'm pretty mild mannered, until you get me riled, and this got me riled. So, I went to see the H.R. Manager and told him that I thought I had been overlooked when my position was upgraded in all the other facilities. He said he didn't know anything about it. So, I said, "Well, I suggest you find out, because I have been in this job a good five years longer than any of the others, and you can believe me when I say that if I find out that they are young and blond, there's going to be hell to pay." I got an upgrade and a nice raise in my next pay check. Men just can't hear the female voice unless she is shouting at them.

My point in this diatribe is this: It could take years for a woman to realize she has been shafted by a company that she has heretofore trusted to do right by her. Imposing a limited number of years for her to discover the inequity puts her at a very unfair advantage.

So, when I heard about Justice Ginsburg, I said a silent, "You go, girl!" and did a little dance. She may have to do a lot more of that in the future. I hope she's up to it.