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17/5/00
Are Women Not Even
Responsible
For Their Work Choices?
"Thousands of
part-time workers have been granted back-dated pension rights in a European
court ruling that is expected to cost British business up to £17bn.
... Because so
many part-time workers are women, employers who excluded such staff from
their pension schemes were found guilty of sex discrimination under
European law." The
Independent
Most of the 60,000 part-timers who will
benefit from this ruling are teachers, health workers, employees of local
government and banking staff. They will be allowed to extend their claims back
to 1976!
Now, changing a law so that it
applies retrospectively, and punishing people who complied with the law
as it stood before, is not normally deemed to be acceptable. It is a strong
principle of law - and of justice - that governments cannot simply make
new laws and punish people as if they had broken them - when they couldn't
possibly have done because they did not exist!
And it should not be tolerated.
Imagine that the government
decided that the maximum UK speed limit for cars should be 60mph, and
that the limit of 70mph had been 'wrong' for the past 20 years. Would we
consider it right that everyone who had exceeded 60mph in the past 20
years should be punished with a fine for each occurrence of having done
this? Of course not. It would be a complete corruption of any decent
notion of justice to do such a thing.
When it comes to benefiting
groups of women, however, the corruption of decent notions of justice
has become the norm.
Let us not pretend that this
European decision is justified because, somehow, it helps the poor and
the needy. It doesn't. Here's a quote from The Guardian.
"The
National Union of Teachers said a typical teacher with 25 years' service
who worked part time for 12 years of that time, retiring on a salary of
£24,000, would [as
a result of this European decision] get £1,800 a year additional pension and an extra £5,400 lump
sum." The
Guardian.
The European decision is NOT based on need or on alleviating poverty, it is based purely on
politically-correct, feminist-influenced notions of what constitutes sex
discrimination. Thus, if a law somehow appears to disadvantage a group
of people, well, that's all right, but if, within this group, there are
more women than men, then it's not all right.
Men, however, can be
disadvantaged at all times. And sex discrimination laws just do not come
into it
Look at prison
reforms, changes to criminal law, sentencing policies. These affect more
men than women, and they are often extremely disadvantageous to the men
concerned. But do you ever hear outcries of sex-discrimination on the
grounds that such things affect more men adversely than women?
What about
soldiers who cannot claim compensation for injuries sustained in the
course of their duties? Isn't this a legal disadvantage that affects
more men than women? Isn't this, therefore, sex discrimination?
What about
no-fault divorces? Given that these are initiated mostly by women,
aren't these sex-discriminatory against men?
What about the
laws relating to custody of the children? Don't these adversely affect
more men than women? Aren't these, therefore, sex-discriminatory laws?
What about the ways in
which sex-discriminatory policies have disadvantaged males when it comes
to their health (men die five years earlier than women) their education
(boys are not catered for as well as girls in the educational system)
and their retirement (see below).
Let's not make any bones about
it. Sex-discrimination laws are not about equality. They are about
discriminating against men in favour of women, at all levels, and in
every sphere of life, on all fronts, and they are about removing any
responsibility that women have for their own actions.
Men are responsible for
everything that they do, but women are to be treated as superior
citizens who are entitled to privileges and benefits because of their
gender alone.
They are to be treated like
spoilt little children - pampered constantly with regard to their
wishes - with the justice and legal systems completely corrupted and debased
to help them succeed with their selfish claims and their demands without the
requisite merit; and also absolved from having to take responsibility for their actions or
for their lack of them.
It's not my fault. It's not my
responsibility. These are the cries of women today.
When they kill their children or
their partners, they are mostly not held responsible.
When they bear children -
something over which they have 100% control - men have to share their
responsibility, even if they were hoodwinked into the pregnancy and even
if they were below the age of consent at the time.
When there is domestic violence
in the home, the fault is not theirs.
When they claim abuse or assault
against a man, no real evidence is required before the law takes action.
They can remain anonymous and they are protected from full and proper
questioning in the courtroom.
When the marriage beaks down, they are likely to get the house and the children, even if the breakdown was caused
entirely by their own actions, or even simply the result of their own
whims.
And, in this particular case,
having reaped all the benefits of the part-time employment which they
freely CHOSE to take up, the law has now determined that they should be
retrospectively compensated even further.
But women who took on part-time
work knew what their contracts entailed. No-one forced them to sign the
contracts. No-one forced them to take the jobs.
In many cases, these
part-timers were paid higher hourly rates precisely because
their jobs were only part time. And many women took these jobs because
of the flexible hours that went with them. Many men would have loved to
have had such jobs, but they didn't take them on because they needed to
support their families. They wanted pensions and they wanted to work
full time.
The pension funds of
full-time employees who work for companies, rather than for government,
are also being caught out RETROSPECTIVELY by the new ruling. They will
be squeezed in order to pay for this magnificent handout. And so the
pensions of all full-time employees will have to be reduced.
Businesses
and companies are going to have to pay out the equivalent of huge fines
as if they had been breaking the law for all of this time.
Further, according to
Ruth Lea from the Institute of Directors, the complications for
companies involved in backtracking through two decades of employment
histories in order to calculate and sort out the back payments will cost a further fortune.
And why are the corporations and
the government going to hand out back-payments to part-time workers on
behalf of everyone else?
Not because there is something
special about part-time workers, but SOLELY because they are mostly
women.
This is the basis for the European court's decision.
We have all been robbed simply because a
group of people which happens to contain more women
than men have decided that the jobs that they CHOSE to do have led them to some relative
disadvantage compared to others - a 'disadvantage' that they knew about
all along; even before they took the jobs.
Take also the recent case of the
speech therapists who won massive awards on the grounds of sex
discrimination. Here's The Independent.
"The health
service is to pay 351 speech therapists £12m to settle one of the
longest-running sex-discrimination cases in legal history.
... Payments of
up to £70,000 each will be made in back pay to the female speech
therapists, who have fought for 15 years for equality with the
male-dominated professions of clinical psychology and pharmacy.
... Senior NHS
managers have acknowledged that the deal could cost the service millions
more as the pay of the most senior therapists increases. The status of
the top specialists will be raised to match that of other health
professionals, allowing them to double their earnings to £60,000 a
year." The
Independent.
Speech therapists have simply ripped
off the NHS for millions of pounds.
No-one would object to people
being paid the same rate for an equivalent job. That is not the
argument. Simply notice that if speech therapy had been a male-dominated
profession, or even if it had contained equal numbers of men and women,
then the sex discrimination laws would not have been applied.
Isn't this ludicrous?
No-one forced these women to
go into speech therapy.
So, are women now not even responsible for their
career decisions and for the paths that they CHOOSE
to take? Have they no minds of their own? Must we always compensate
women who make 'financial errors of judgement' by choosing easier and more
flexible jobs? Must we always pander to the cries of 'unfair sex
discrimination' wherever women CHOOSE
to congregate, and whatever they CHOOSE
to do? And must we yet again corrupt our justice system, in this case by
applying laws retrospectively, in order to appease the selfish feminist
lobby?
Take a look again at some of the
issues mentioned above in blue. Do you ever
hear from the European courts that the laws regarding these issues are
'sex-discriminatory'?
No, you do not.
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