Good wrecker's around Welly?

[Ms Piggy]

Also beware of drawing "equity" comparisons between professions dominated by women and those that aren't.

Why?

Arrrghh - would love to stay and chat but must study. This sort of discussion and way of thinking is all new to me so I may not be as articulate or as full of information as you guys but thanks for the interesting distraction. I'm trying to learn to thinking more critically. Basically the more I'm told the less I know!

[Ms Piggy]

If my wife, a Nurse, went back to work full time, she would earn 95% of what I earn, with penals on top pushing her past my earning potential. Contrary to popular opinion IT is NOT well-paid, and has not kept pace with cost of living increases for the last five years. My brother is a truck driver and earns more than me, so I think there are a lot of assumptions out there that need dispelling.

Yes true Jim. As I say it was a discussion in a lecture. i.e. 2hours out of my busy life. I realise nurses are horribly underpaid - part of my pint actually.

Hmmmm - maybe I should go back to driving trucks Over and out, that's a BIG 10-4.

[F5 Dave]

Nice chatting CSL, learning is always good. Just listen to what people say, but don’t listen to what people say.

By this I mean people are often wrong, myself included but with conviction sell you their story. Always keep asking questions, more might be revealed than initially evident or “common knowledge”, an oxymoron if ever there was one.

[jrandom]

Always keep asking questions, more might be revealed than initially evident or “common knowledge”, an oxymoron if ever there was one.

I've found personally that starting out by assuming everyone else is an idiot is an excellent life strategy.

On the one hand, you'll usually be right.

On the other, when you're wrong, it will provide valuable lessons in humility.

Also, you will never be overburdened with friends, leaving you with more time to get on with the important things in life, like drinking Scotch alone on a Friday night with a good book.

[Hitcher]

Why?

OK, let's look at something like Police (male dominated) versus Nurses (female dominated). Both do worthy work for society, work rostered shifts, etc but should they be paid the same?

"Equity" in this context requires somebody somewhere to exercise a value judgement (prejudice judgement) regarding what is equal to what. At the moment there is a market that sets rates of pay. If you can't get enough people to fill a role, you generally have to pay more. If you have a surfeit of applicants, you can often pay a bit less. Good old supply and demand theory at work. Not perfect, but the best solution we've got!

[James Deuce]

Yes true Jim. As I say it was a discussion in a lecture. i.e. 2hours out of my busy life. I realise nurses are horribly underpaid - part of my pint actually.

Hmmmm - maybe I should go back to driving trucks Over and out, that's a BIG 10-4.

Surely you misunderstood?

[James Deuce]

OK, let's look at something like Police (male dominated) versus Nurses (female dominated). Both do worthy work for society, work rostered shifts, etc but should they be paid the same?

"Equity" in this context requires somebody somewhere to exercise a value judgement (prejudice judgement) regarding what is equal to what. At the moment there is a market that sets rates of pay. If you can't get enough people to fill a role, you generally have to pay more. If you have a surfeit of applicants, you can often pay a bit less. Good old supply and demand theory at work. Not perfect, but the best solution we've got!

Nursing has never fit the supply and demand model. Institutional understaffing has resulted in staffing policies and procedures that mean more work for Nurses, but not more money.

[F5 Dave]

Nursing has never fit the supply and demand model. Institutional understaffing has resulted in staffing policies and procedures that mean more work for Nurses, but not more money.

It's funny (in a sick way) that some govt depts can be run in such a way as to pay nogoodfckers stupid amounts of money to squander as much public money as they can & then get bonuses despite scandals & lack of performance, yet other soft targets (health, education etc) get the bums rush.

[Hitcher]

Nursing has never fit the supply and demand model. Institutional understaffing has resulted in staffing policies and procedures that mean more work for Nurses, but not more money.

Exactly. And this won't be solved by somebody somewhere determining that nurses should be paid the same as Police.

[Ms Piggy]

Surely you misunderstood?

Ooooopss, did I? If you are underpaid working in IT and your wife (who is a highly qualified nurse) will only get 95% of what you earn and your truck drivin' brother earns more than both of you.....well that would make me wanna be a truck driver. Well not really but, maybe if being a social worker f*cks with my mind too much.

Mr H - your nurses vs police example is the sorta thing we were talking about. Interesting that Police get paid more than nurses and who dominates that profession. All those lovely (and not so lovely) men that I'm a fan of.

F5Dave - yes it's good to think about what I believe and why. I still think women are disadvantaged but, not sure how to sort that one out.

[James Deuce]

Ooooopss, did I? If you are underpaid working in IT and your wife (who is a highly qualified nurse) will only get 95% of what you earn and your truck drivin' brother earns more than both of you.....well that would make me wanna be a truck driver. Well not really but, maybe if being a social worker f*cks with my mind too much.

Mr H - your nurses vs police example is the sorta thing we were talking about. Interesting that Police get paid more than nurses and who dominates that profession. All those lovely (and not so lovely) men that I'm a fan of.

F5Dave - yes it's good to think about what I believe and why. I still think women are disadvantaged but, not sure how to sort that one out.

Ahh yes. I forgot. Being a man I'm obviously getting what I deserve then. That is her base rate. In reality she would earn more than me. I am not underpaid working in IT, I am getting market rate for the job I do. Nurses wages have jumped double figure percentage points overnight, and as a tax payer that will have an effect at some point down the track on my income. Please bear in mind that she isn't working, because raising children is more important. Nurses no longer get paid less than Police either. The rate for a senior staff nurse is the same as a Police constable, thanks to the last wage round that increments Nurse's pay steeply over the next 12 months.

The NZ Public do not want to pay Nurses more, because as many people have stated on this site they have no desire to pay more tax. But they will expect quality care when in a public hospital, and complain about service and food, and arrive drunk and break bones and cause other sundry injuries to Nursing and Medical staff, and then complain about the shoddy treatment they got. There is no point complaining about what Social Workers, Police (who I think are underpaid too), and Nurses get paid, if you aren't personally willing to pay more income tax, so it becomes a self defeating cycle.

Still waaay OT too.

The memory of that darn wrecker made me grumpy all day, and NOW look what's happened!

[Ms Piggy]

Thanks lads. Nice to have non-nasty conversation about such a controversial topic.

[toads]

I missed seeing those. I have some difficulty rationalising how this can be so, given my experience in a range of public and private sector organisations.

Yes I have a dificulty with statistics too, largely because the variables, are never mentioned. For example, if the statistics represent the whole of new zealand then wages in the major centres tend to be higher than those in the provinces, and there may be more women working in the provinces per capita than the percentages of working women in the cities, who knows, I think the financial predictions made are like the "average wage" thing that adds em all up and divides them by the amount of people working. It can't reflect anything other than the variables that are used to calculate the outcome.

[Ms Piggy]

NZ's top corporate executive is a woman and gets paid more than $2million a year. The PM is a woman and much of the cabinet is female and earn 6 figure salaries. If the data your lecturer has is more than 3 years old, it may need revising. There are a large number of women where I work who are paid substantially more than me and my colleagues, who are largely male I might add, and have positions of "authority".

Ok, my lecturer got back to me about the stats he showed us, so I've attached it to this post. As you can see they go from 1991 through to 2003.

He also said: "You do need to remember that different measures give different results, so, if we are talking about average hourly earnings excluding overtime, the gender pay gap has reduced from around 81% in the early 1990s to 85.3% in 2003. If it's the average weekly earnings excluding overtime then it's been more static between 76-79% but not showing a very clear trend upwards.

Once you include overtime it all changes again (the gaps get bigger again because women tend to work fewer overtime hours). You'll recall that the gap in weekly average earnings is greater than hourly because women tend to work fewer hours (less full-time workers) which drives their average down."

So I was actually refering to 'average hourly earnings' but got my figures slightly wrong.

[Hitcher]

Ok, my lecturer got back to me about the stats he showed us, so I've attached it to this post. As you can see they go from 1991 through to 2003.

Thanks for these, CSL. But hardly evidence of injustice or inequality. In brutal terms these are the averages of the total male recorded workforce compared with the comparable recorded female workforce. This is an average of the whole fruitshop, not apples compared with apples.