IRONY ALERT! Chamber “Fetish” Blogger Quits, Citing Work/Life Balance Issues

Today, U.S. Chamber Watch bids a fond farewell to Brad Peck, the infamous Chamber Post blogger who said that women who sought equal pay with their male counterparts were doing so out of a “fetish for money.”

It turns out that Peck had a little more inside knowledge about the “challenges” working parents face than we might have guessed: In a Chamber Post blog this week, Peck announced his final day at the Chamber, citing, hilariously, work/life balance issues.

Peck wrote the infamous Fetish post this summer, and immediately reaped the reward: he was excoriated for his rudimentary understanding of the challenges women face in the workplace, and for his glib advice that women “choose” the right jobs and the right partners, rather than complaining about “equality.”

He also disputed the notion that “the idea that giving up ‘pay and promotions’ is a ‘terribly steep price’ to pay for time away from work.” For some people, he said, giving up some pay or opportunity might net them “a lot” – of what, he didn’t elaborate.

But it turns out that Peck’s wife is not among those who are willing to forgo promotions and pay. In a somewhat confusing post last week, Peck bid adieu to Chamber Post to return to his “first love…middle management.” He explained that, a few years ago, he and his wife had “a problem” – deciding between jobs and kids. She had the opportunity to go partner track at her job, so they decided that Peck would be the one to make the career tradeoffs.

To make such tradeoffs, Peck needed a job with “flexibility, cooperation, productivity, mobility and markets,” and so he “pitched my boss on the idea of a blog a job as a blogger,” which allowed him to be both “flexible and available at the same time.”

Peck’s lesson du jour: What worked for him - flexibility, cooperation, productivity, mobility and markets – are “also right for our country.” He explains that “growth… can only be achieved by creating new markets and lowering barriers to existing ones.”

That’s pretty rich from a guy who seems to think that it is “individual choice” and not other barriers that create the wage gap. Look, we’re sincerely happy for Peck and his wife that they had high-powered jobs that allowed them to keep their careers and raise children too. But Peck is, once again, emblematic of the U.S. Chamber, and corporate culture at large. Because Peck’s situation worked out fabulously for him, he assumes that those who have a different track should fare as well, and if they don’t, they’ve made some bad personal choices for which there are no systemic contributing factors. We’d like to see some restaurant servers, or heck, even most middle-managers, ask to be reassigned to the “blog” section while they’re raising their kids.

The bottom line: Brad Peck, you’ll be missed by us. You said what the U.S. Chamber was thinking outright, frequently dripping with venom, but with little of the obfuscation that the Chamber’s been so fond of the past couple of weeks. Here’s hoping whoever shoulders your mantle at Chamber Post is similarly unabashed about their opinions.