Equal Pay Nonsense

[Bruce Tuncks]

How can the politically correct lot ask for equal pay when brute strength is needed? Like for a fireman, the test should be if you can climb up a ladder carrying an old-fashioned bag of wheat. This is what is needed if you have to rescue an unresponsive person from a fire.

I agree that some women would pass this test and some men would fail, but mostly the women would avoid the test. After some years, the media would be referring to a   " male-dominated" industry.

Recently, I loaned a trailer for moving some garden waste to a 60 year-old woman. I reckon she could have lifted it onto her car, but she wouldn't try.

Now how could somebody like that be worth the same wages as somebody more capable?

 

[nomadpete]

I'm all for equal pay.

 

In particular, I'd like to get equal pay as a bank CEO, for the same amount of work they do.

[nomadpete]

The fact is, the world isn't fair. There will always be undervalued employees and there will always be over valued employees. It's the nature of human animal behaviour and no amount of legislation will cure it.

[Old Koreelah]

40 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

....Now how could somebody like that be worth the same wages as somebody more capable?

 

I’m with you there, Bruce.
My working life taught me that most men got ahead thru connections, while most women just did the hard yards and kept the show on the road. Who is worth more?

[onetrack]

I've often wondered how many women get on in the jobs they've taken on in male-dominated fields. Without a doubt, many rely on assistance from male counterparts for brute strength jobs - and many leave those hard, physical jobs, when they realise that they're a square peg in a round hole. 

 

I often think of women mechanics and how they get on. Many mechanical repair jobs simply require brute strength ability - and 99% of women don't have it.

In the truck depot next to my workshop, there's about 80 or 90 trucks working out of there, and parked there when work has finished. There's probably about 3 or 4 of the semis driven by women, and they would not be able to change a standard 11Rx22.5 truck wheel by themselves. I've handled massively heavy items all my life, having been in the heavy equipment industry since I was 16. There's only one thing heavier than bulldozer parts, and that's machine tools!

 

You quite often can't utilise mechanised lifting equipment in the field - because, (A), it's not available, and (B) you can't always get the lifting equipment into tight locations, unless you have more specialised adaptors and attachments.

But changing a truck wheel requires real effort and sheer grunt - you rarely get access to mechanised wheel-handling equipment.

 

However, the trucking companys and owners make it easy by simply telling the drivers they are not to change wheels, but merely call up Beaurepaires or Bridgestone tyre fitters who will do the job for them.

This has two advantages for the companies and owners - they eliminate unsatisfactory wheel changes by unqualified drivers, and they eliminate a host of workers comp claims for on-the-job injuries.

It would be interesting to see the figures for on-the-job injuries for women working in male-dominated industries, where brute strength is a requirement.

I've never seen a woman bricklayer or brickies labourer, but I believe there are a small number of them.

 

The problem we have is that there's this BS that women are completely equal to men. They aren't, and never will be. But they are our mothers and partners and daughters, and they possess many complementary skills to men - but 100% equal - never.

They are good at negotiation and discussion, and good at mental tasks, and repetitive tasks. They are often good when fine "feel" is required. But they simply lack sheer muscle strength, due to their physical makeup.

They have 30% more fat cells than men, and less sinew and muscle mass. Their body design as regards muscle leverage is poor - and they simply cannot equal men in sheer muscle strength.

 

I was quite surprised many years ago when I was at a rural "tractor pull" and they held a competition for teams of men and women to pull a static tractor with a rope. The blokes grabbed the rope and moved the tractor 50-60 metres with ease.

Then the group of women picked up the rope. Now, these were mostly some pretty hefty gals, big thighs and solid builds. But they performed poorly in the movement of the tractor, and it was a real effort for them to move it - and they didn't move it as far as the male team did.

 

I used  to employ a few women dump truck drivers (dump trucks are as easy to drive as cars, just bigger) - and they had a better truck maintenance and repair record than the men truck drivers. They would report small problems instead of letting them become big problems. They wouldn't use brute strength on controls, they were more gentle on them.

They handled the boring repetitiveness of dump truck work without complaint, without speeding or without trying to race each other - as the blokes would. Women just work more co-operatively when placed together, blokes are just plain competitive, and often bolshie with it.

 

The best arrangements I have seen are where men and women operate together, utilising their respective strengths (no pun intended). I've seen farming couples who operated as excellent partnerships, where the woman used her skills in management, finance planning and negotiation, and the bloke used his physical skills to do the hard yards where the grunt was required.

But they both worked together amicably for a joint purpose, and they both knew their respective skills, and used them in a co-operative manner.

 

Funnily enough, my stepdaughter took up plumbing when she was 18, in 1991. I reckon she was more than likely the first female plumber in W.A. - and many people were surprised to find a female plumber.

She did the hard yards and put up with a lot of crap. She got a rude shock when she realised plumbing involved a lot of shovel work, digging for pipes. I think a lot of the blokes did their best to help her out with the hard yakka.

She stayed with plumbing for about 8 years, but realised that there were better positions that didn't involve hard yakka, where she could utilise her knowledge gained in the plumbing field.

 

She ended up going into the oil and gas industry, and that industry led to her becoming an accomplished manager, skilled in drilling tool knowledge and repairs. She then moved on to OH&S management, and is now a senior OH&S manager for Beach Energy, responsible for the smooth running of many of Beachs oil and gas projects.

It is quite amazing how OH&S is a crucial requirement in the Oil & Gas industry, because so many blokes in that industry are real risk takers, and few blokes take the time to ensure all operations are safely run, and properly set up.

She's had to deal with things like engineering subcontractors supplying components, where complete sections of walkways were missing! Or male engineers who are gung-ho, and don't even study up on the safety parameters of a particular job they undertake.

She had one new bolshie engineer who carried out an engineering repair on a high pressure pipeline in the Cooper Basin, without referring to any of the vital safety steps involved in doing so! He nearly initiated a major pipeline disaster with his gung-ho approach.

[octave]

My understanding is that the test physical test form male and female firefighters is identical.

 

Physical strength amongst the population is a bell curve and whilst the male and female bell curves may be displaced a little there is still a massive overlap.   

[spacesailor]

EQUALLY ,.

If A man is forced to do the heavy lifting work of a  woman, while the woman gets to sit on her lazy ass, & the men worker,s have to bring, then remove pallets at their bec & call, whilst doing their own work for EQUAL PAY.

The work load that women in production factories do, Could have been allocated between two men, as part of the MANS job.

Been there done that.

AND have  been fired for pointing it out & complaining.

No equality for men.

spacesailor

Edited May 15, 2021 by spacesailor
Spelling

[octave]

29 minutes ago, onetrack said:

They are good at negotiation and discussion, and good at mental tasks, and repetitive tasks. They are often good when fine "feel" is required.

A big generalization, again a wide range of abilities and strengths among individuals.  Let us say though that this is true should we recruit woman over men for jobs requiring negotiation skills or perhaps pay female surgeons more because they are good at tasks requiring a "fine feel"?    

 

It is quite likely that some occupations will be comprised mostly a particular gender.    Over time jobs that require grunt work are decreasing and thinking jobs are increasing.    As a man I do not want to be typecast as only being useful for muscle power.

 

If we can generalize about the physical abilities of women we could also consider the general physical differences between younger and older males.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

I know darn well, at 72, I can no longer match the physical work ability of younger men. But I have the cunning and experience that comes with old age, that compensates!

I don't believe we should strictly adhere to generalisations about the difference between men and womens abilities - but when sheer physical strength is required for a job, I believe common sense dictates that men are the preferred choice for those jobs. 

There are many jobs currently filled by men, that women can do quite admirably. We only have to look at wartime, when women formed up to 30% of the workforce at home, taking over many jobs that men formerly did.

But the bottom line is that women are built, physically and emotionally, for child-bearing and nurturing. I can't compete there, and I don't want to.

 

I often wonder if much of the male anger directed towards women is because the trend since WW2 for women to become a much larger part of the workforce and the resultant competition with men for the jobs, is behind a lot of the violence and anger directed at women, by numerous men. Of course, perhaps they always were just angry men, who enjoy inflicting violence on others.

 

Interestingly, when Caterpillar were designing and manufacturing their first diesel engines in the late 1920's (they produced their first commercially-available diesel engine in 1931), there was a requirement that fuel injection components were required to be manufactured to tolerances of 1/10,000 of an inch.

Caterpillar found that women were the only employees who could be entrusted to ensure those fine tolerances were reached and maintained in production - so women were used almost exclusively for the production of the early Caterpillar fuel injection components, until high-precision manufacturing machinery could be developed.

 

Edited May 15, 2021 by onetrack

[facthunter]

A lot of these "tough blokes" will end up with bad backs and other issues by the time they are 50 or so.. Women can stand exposure to cold better than men and they are just as tough mentally when they have to be. Where a really strong person is required mechanical lift assistance can't be far away as a next move . I crushed 3 of my lower discs. carrying heavy engine s and big Blocks of trucks in my youth. Only  the most specialised exercise regime I've developed over many years has enabled me to do "NORMAL" things and I have to be careful all the time.  Women are less ego involved than blokes. That's why they don't crash, overload and overspeed equipment... When I owned and ran a vineyard my wife did a lot of the tractor work when I was working another at the same time. She even carried a bag of flour to mark the rows so she didn't miss any. when spraying.. THAT caused quite a stir amongst the other BLOKES all around the area.  Her driving the tractors, not the flour throwing.   She has no trouble double declutching non synchro gearboxes either by the way. .Nev

Edited May 15, 2021 by facthunter
more content.

[octave]

58 minutes ago, onetrack said:

But the bottom line is that women are built, physically and emotionally, for child-bearing and nurturing. I can't compete there, and I don't want to.

This is 1950s thinking.  Humans are are capable of many roles.   There are many NASA astronauts and engineers that would probably resent that implication not to mention airline pilots  flying instructors etc.  If women are built primarily for child bearing and rearing what are men built for? grunt work?

 

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

I often wonder if much of the male anger directed towards women is because the trend since WW2 for women to become a much larger part of the workforce and the resultant competition with men for the jobs, is behind a lot of the violence and anger directed at women, by numerous men. Of course, perhaps they always were just angry men, who enjoy inflicting violence on others.

 

Steady there I am not sure the most men are angry.    I certainly am not.  I have thrived with the social change that has happened during my lifetime.  In my own situation at first we both worked in reasonably well paying careers.    We had a child and for the first 18 months my wife went back to fulltime work whilst I stayed home and did the child rearing.   Some may say this makes me less of a man but it is something I am immensely proud of and means I have a special bond with my son (now 31)    We then dropped out for some years and we both just worked casually whilst we educated my son.  Then we both worked full time again.  In the last few years my wife worked full time and I worked part time.  We have recently taken early retirement mostly funded by my wife's super.  I never had the sole burdon of the economic well being of the family  The point is that my wifes pay and conditions were as important to me as my own.   

 

I don't see what is wrong with society moving towards a less straight jacketed  system where people are free to pursue their work and personal goals.  Sure there will probably always be more of one gender or another in some jobs but barriers to working in  a particular area should be real and based on an individuals strengths, 

[facthunter]

Men generally have regarded women as property, sex slaves  etc. Often children are just unpaid workers on the farm etc.  Where men have all the say there's not going to be much change. For THEM It's all right when you can get it. Most churches are man favouring also. . Nev 

[Yenn]

The work situation nowadays is nowhere near as arduous as 50 years ago. We used to unload a truck of cement bags by carrying two bags on our shoulder. Nowadays the bags are half the size and only one is to be carried. We used to regularly lift shuttering for concrete work that weighed about 56 lbs, we lifted it 7' 6" and placed it while standing on a platform with about a foot clearance and several hundred feet drop, not one shutter but about 30 and done as fast as possible so that we could finish the pour and knock off. I didn't see a womann construction worker until about 1999 and she was terrific. Could work better than most of the men except for brute strength, but she was canny enough to work around the big loads by making them smaller.

[Old Koreelah]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

A lot of these "tough blokes" will end up with bad backs and other issues by the time they are 50 or so...

Or much younger! 

 

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

...Women can stand exposure to cold better than men and they are just as tough mentally when they have to be. 

My daughter’s job exposes her to emotional stresses that have broken many male counterparts; her team is largely comprised of young mothers.
I suspect women have an unfair advantage: they can actually talk about their feelings and get over work traumas.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Once ( at my place ) there was a mentally disturbed young woman at 3 am. There was also her mother and GP.  Her blood pressure was 220/160

The GP said she needed to go to a mental hospital immediately so she could be sedated before she burst an artery. I said I would drive her.  The GP said she needed to go by ambulance or she would not be admitted.

The ambulance lot told the GP that " as they only had an all-woman crew they were not accepting mental cases"  ( He talked fast and eventually got them to come )

Where is the "equal pay" there?

[octave]

7 hours ago, onetrack said:

but when sheer physical strength is required for a job, I believe common sense dictates that men are the preferred choice for those jobs. 

When physical strength is required then people with physical strength who also meet the other criteria for the job should be employed whether they are male female old or young. The true test is whether someone is able to perform the duties.   It is ridiculous to use gender as the measure rather than an objective test of fitness for the job. Would it make sense to reject males from nursing because some people believe women are more suited?  

Edited May 15, 2021 by octave

[octave]

16 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

( He talked fast and eventually got them to come )

Where is the "equal pay" there?

And did those poor fragile women cope?   Perhaps the culprit here is the people in charge of tasking crews.   If the issue is that physical strength is required for the job of paramedic then perhaps there should be minimum heights and weights etc.   Yes of course over a population the average man is stronger and heavier than the average woman but using gender as a candidate criteria is just plain dumb.   

[Jerry_Atrick]

I have to admit, I loathe the diversity requirements, especially with the larger corporations these days. I understand where they are coming from, but when I have been a hiring manager, I have always looked for the best person for the job openeing who was available at the time. Quite a few times, I have not even filled a position and told internal or external clients their projects are going to have to wait. When the remonstrate, my response is if they are happy to pay the cost of the inadequate quality or the regulatory fines, then I will make an offer to the least capable.

 

I think it is rare today, certainly in larger corporations, where there is a bias except where there are two very close candidates (and that includes both technical and personality traits). I even admit to that. My preference in most firms I have worked for would be for a woman - the reason is although there are increasing in numbers in the industry (my immediate manager is a woman), there is stiull a gulf and I find adding a woman to the mix improves the motivation of other women and often the men, too.

 

The key is, if we are looking for the best for the role, then diversity is a side issue. Firms that really need to manage it are discriminatory; firms that genuinely look for the right/best person for the job amongsty your applicants, there is no need for diversity management, quotas, etc. We have never paid men more than women, whites more than blacks, right-handers more than left handers - we have rates for the jobs (there is some wriggle room).. if they are really good, they get the top end; if they are good, they get the bottom end. If they are less than good, they don't get (or keep) the job.

 

[edit]

I have mentioned this before, but in my previous role., I worked for a fairly devout Muslim (Pakistani). A great bloke.. and he lived by the same mantra.. He employed Indians, Aussies, and even Jews and there was not a shred - not a shred of bias, od preferential treatment.. One of the best managers I have had. (and also one of the worst - but not for reasons of discrimination).

 

My point.. if firemen (firepeople??) need to be able to lift 70Kgs of dead weight, then employ people who can. But, you can divvy up the roles... Those who will go in and pick up souls, and those who will continue on the hoses (no mean feat, either)... May be time not to expect everyone to lift the 70kgs of free-weight (mind you, I wouldn't get that job, either).

[/edit]

Edited May 15, 2021 by Jerry_Atrick

[spacesailor]

AND the firms that take a small amount of work from the Male staff, just to have More Females staff, in their portfolio.  ( if portfollio is the right word, for looking good on  paper. )

Same firm has ' mandortry' overtime so the wage portfollio has a higher value !.

spacesailor