Georgia’s Republican Senate hopeful, David Perdue, has been running a campaign that’s partially dependent on his background as a job-creator and a leader in the position of CEO at Dollar General, but that hasn’t been working out too well for him when it comes to issues surrounding the economy and fair wage issues.
For months, the Republican has been hammered with criticism for shipping jobs and manufacturing processes overseas, and has answered criticism with flippancy, then befuddlement at how the voters could possibly view the outsourced jobs as a defining issue for his campaign. (Much like Mitt Romney, Perdue views his business background- which consists of American factory closings, layoffs, and jobs moved overseas – as a good thing.)
During a recent debate against democrat Michelle Nunn, Perdue’s business practices again returned to haunt him, as he defended himself Sunday night against charges that he paid female managers less than male ones when he was CEO of Dollar General.
His defense? He proudly explained: “it was less than 2,000 people” who brought the lawsuit against the company. “There was no wrongdoing there,” Perdue said in a debate Sunday night against Democrat Michelle Nunn. “That lawsuit or that claim or that complaint was settled five years after I was there. She knows that. And it was less than 2,000 people. We had upwards of 70,000 employees at that company.”
Nunn responded that 2,000 women “actually seems like quite a lot to me who say that they were discriminated against,” which seemed liked a fair assessment, especially considering that Perdue’s estimate of how many people were affected by Dollar General’s gender-based discrimination was minimized — the number was actually 2,100 — which would be about 3% of the workforce while he was CEO.
So less than 2k is okay? How about having a zero tolerance policy instead? It is really sad that we still have to deal with this stuff. If they were not being paid what they are worth, and less than a man yes that is discrimination. Where is the common sense here people?
Amen!
If this man thought that was a good thing to say about himself, there is obviously a huge discrepancy between the younger and older generations. Zero sir, zero is the number you were going for.