4 ms·
It's funny how we pretend we want "equal pay for equal work" and compensation to be tied only to merit and productivity, but in practice do the opposite. While
by floor2 5y ago
It's funny how we pretend we want "equal pay for equal work" and compensation to be tied only to merit and productivity, but in practice do the opposite. While the visible salary number might be the same, the benefits structure of contemporary American corporations means that employees with children have a total compensation at a drastically higher hourly wage than their childless peers.
To be perfectly clear before I'm attacked and downvoted- I'm not arguing against society benefiting from people having children or wanting parents to be stable and supported or anything of that nature.
But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. Am I being paid for the value I'm creating with my labor or am I receiving an ongoing entitlement for having passed an interview? Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs?
Would it be more fair, inclusive and equitable to allow employees to choose between compensation structures that either paid higher hourly wages without the benefits of paid time off or lower hourly wages with paid leave, such that all employees ultimately received equal pay for the labor they provided?
- eesmith 5y agoI can't say what Google's policy is, even after looking. However, a least in some countries where they pay for parental leave, it's capped. For example, it appears that in Germany a VP making EUR 500K/year isn't eligible to receive any Elterngeld. And in Denmark it maxes out at DKK 4,465/week = USD 669/week = ~$35K/year -- both the VP and entry-level employee in your example will get the same benefits.
- wkimeria 5y agoI didn't know that, but that makes sense.
- halflings 5y ago> But there is a huge double-standard here about what a job is and how compensation works. [...] Why is a VP paid $500,000 for taking care of their child for 6 months but an entry level employee is paid $50,000 for taking care of theirs? You can't look at a VP's output the way you'd look at a factory worker's. The VP is being compensated for the work they'll provide over the time spent at the company. They might have no output for 6 months then provide outsized output during the next 2 years (as organizational changes they've made start paying off). Their compensation is based on this lifetime output. Them taking parental leave in average once every 4 years is taken into account in this formula. People that never have children are still a minority, so they get lost in this calculation. Yes, they're definitely being "underpaid" in that sense the same way someone leading a healthy lifestyle is "under-benefitting from his tax contributions".