- U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vows to "keep fighting for equal pay for equal work" for women. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
Hillary has also proposed increased profit-sharing. Americans work hard. Those who put in the hard work and long hours should experience the benefits of some ownership of the operation in which they labor. Evidence supports the benefits to the employer of including the employees in the profits.
If Sen. McConnell thinks fighting for women and families is playing the "gender card"—okay. Here's our#gendercard:
Dodd-Frank was enacted 5 years ago today & has been under GOP attack ever since. As president I'll defend Wall Street reform & go beyond. -H
Hillary Clinton 
Profit sharing is just common sense. See Hillary's plan: http://hrc.io/1I8CPMX
Wow! Scrambling! To pay fairly. Pathetic! But employers have been getting away with this for far too long. The magician's trick here is putting people on managerial salary (often for a few thousand per year beyond what they were making in the ranks) and then expecting unlimited hours put in at that yearly rate.
Overtime Rules Send Bosses Scrambling
In a prior position, over 14 years, I worked 13 Saturdays a year. I was not paid for those Saturdays even at a daily rate the heck with overtime. I was told it was part of the job description and all of those hours were covered by my yearly salary which ranged from 22K to 26K over those years, My staffers who worked on those Saturdays, salaried at 18K to 23K over the same period, were paid time-and-a-half. I was responsible for the accuracy of all of the work done by my staff. I worked 182 Saturdays over those years for which I was not paid beyond my regular 9-5:30 pay. I will not even bother with the extra two to five hours I regularly put in Mon. - Fri. beyond regular office hours.
It is bad enough that people are cheated on their paychecks with this trick. I would love a grandfather clause that allowed me to collect those unpaid wages. The most insidious underbelly to this practice is that those hours and the funds that might have been paid do not count into social security either. Those are funds that should not only be paid but also should be taxed and appear in your SSI contributions. It is a double-blind trap for workers, depriving them both of present and future compensation and also cheats the social security system of taxable funds.
If you are a woman in this situation, you have no way to know if your male counterparts do receive the overtime pay. You suck it up. If you are a single woman, the assumption is that you have unlimited extra hours to contribute in this way despite hidden responsibilities that nobody cares about such as ill and aging parents and other family members and your own, perhaps invisible, disabilities and personal issues.
Nobody's time and efforts should be taken for granted. Work and the profits it engenders should be compensated equitably. The economy does well when American families do well. Families do well when all working members are treated with fairness. Hillary is fighting for all of us. It is not just a women's issue. It is an American issue. If we want to see change in the workplace, we need to be behind her.
