Arizona Daily Star: Barber Pay Gap Controversy Has Reached “Fever Pitch”

Arizona Democrat Ron Barber continues to face questions about his hypocrisy on pay equality. His hometown newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, reports today that the controversy over Ron Barber’s office pay gap between men and women has reached a “fever pitch in the Congressional District 2 race.”

Just to review, an apples to apples comparison based on the White House formula cited by Barber shows he’s not living up to his own standard.

What women make compared to men based on the median salaries of full-time, year-round workers:

Nationally: 77 cents on the dollar

Barber’s office: 84 cents on the dollar

Ron Barber, April 15, AZ Daily Star: “..any gap based on gender is inexcusable.”

From today’s Daily Star:

The National Republican Campaign Committee fired the first shot complaining about bad math shortly after an Op-Ed piece by Rep. Ron Barber in the Star April 15, saying it was “inexcusable” that women were still being paid less than their male counterparts more than a half-century after joining the workforce.

Barber’s piece relied heavily on a statistic used by the White House, comparing the median salaries of all men working full-time for a full year to their female counterparts.

The NRCC used the same math with Barber’s congressional staff, calculating the disparity for the 10 employees working in his office last year full-time for the entire year

The NRCC says that using the White House formula, it found that the Tucson Democrat is not paying his female staffers as much as their male counterparts.

Barber is paying women roughly $8,950 a year less their male counterparts, said NRCC Regional Political Director Annie Kelly.

“Ron Barber should be ashamed,” said Kelly. “If Barber truly believes this is how to measure gender inequality in the workforce, shouldn’t initiatives to close the gender gap start in his own office?”