If Donald Trump said this, he would be in for a barrage of criticism (and rightly so) for spewing nonsense about things he would do as president that have nothing to do with the actual powers of the presidency. But let Hillary say it? I guess this just falls under the category of Clintons-always-lie-so-who-cares, but dang:
If she is elected, employers would be required to review employee pay to ensure that women are being paid fairly, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.
"I'm going to require that everybody take a look," Clinton said to applause at a community college event in Brooklyn.
She cited the example of an executive friend, Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com, who was surprised to find pay disparities between men and women at his cloud computing company and pledged to "fix it."
Benioff would never have known of the disparities if he had not reviewed pay records, and other business leaders are similarly in the dark, Clinton said. She said structural biases and discrimination are partly to blame.
She did not provide details about how she would require businesses to compare pay between men and women. She has previously said she will work to pass proposed legislation called the Paycheck Fairness Act that would make it easier for women to claim unequal treatment, and says she will remove legal barriers that prevent some women from finding out what their male counterparts are paid.
I guess I could launch into a discussion of how this would actually work - what the review would consist of, how one would define unfairness, what the remedy might be - but that would give way too much credit to the nonsense Hillary spewed in the first place.
The president of the United States has no power to "require that everybody take a look" at their pay policies. None. Not as an executive action. Not with the backing of Congress. And that's assuming you could even define what it means, which you can't because the whole idea is so nebulous as to be completely meaningless.
That said, I do have a pro tip for women who think they're being underpaid vis-a-vis men who are doing "equal work" to theirs. It's pretty simple, really: Stop accepting lowball salary offers.
If you think your market value exceeds the offers you're getting, there are some things you need to do. First, do your research and make sure that's true. Find out the salaries of people in your range so you're not just randomly complaining. But second - and far more importantly - make the case to a potential employer for why their investment in the salary you want would pay them back the ROI they need. Show them how your contribution would come back to them in the form of value they can't do without. Get to know how their operation works and explain how you would make it more successful.
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And once you've made that case convincingly and backed it up with enough facts, propose a business deal in which you'd get what you want and you'd deliver what they need. And if they don't agree, don't make the deal under terms that are not satisfactory to you.
Are you suggesting, Dan, that she turn down a job offer?
Yes. If she thinks the compensation is not sufficient for her value, she should absolutely turn it down. And take her services somewhere that recognizes her value. If that's really her value.
Look, every employment agreement is a deal between two willing parties. If you don't think an offer is fair, you don't have to take it. If you take it and then find out you could have gotten more - or that someone else got more - that's on you because you didn't find out what you were really worth. If you and the employer disagree on your value, it's up to you to persuade the employer you're worth more. If you fail to do that, that's also on you. And if they hold to the lowball offer and you still take it, that's also on you.
But what if she needs a job and can't afford to wait for other offers?
Then she needs to do what she needs to do, but if she's desperate for a job then I disagree with the suggestion that her market value is really that high. High-value people are in demand. You can't be in high demand but also desperate for a job. It doesn't work that way.
But if you're a woman and you want to get paid more, what you shouldn't do is vote for some lying blowhard who promises to do things she cannot do in order to help you. No employer is going to change what they pay anyone because President Hillary made them. And if you vote for her because you think she can, then I question whether you're smart enough to actually deserve what you seem to think you're worth.
