Equal Pay Day
Equal Pay Day – highlighting the need for equal pay for women workers across America – is April 22nd. This marks time of year in which the wages paid to American women “catch up” to the wages paid to men from the previous year. In other words, because the average woman earns less, she must work longer for the same amount of pay.
Equal pay is not simply a women’s issue, but a family issue. The wage gap hurts everyone – husbands, wives, children, and parents – because it lowers family incomes that pay for essentials: groceries, doctors’ visits, child care. When women earn more, an entire family benefits. Furthermore, 41 percent of women are their families’ sole source of income.
In 1963, President John Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, yet the wage gap between men and women is narrowing by less than half a percent per year. In 2006, women earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. African American women earn just 63 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic American women fare worse, at 52 cents.
Speaker Pelosi: 'Women Deserve Equal Pay For Equal Work'
“This weekend, we cheered on Danica Patrick when she made history as the first woman to take home first prize winnings from an Indy Car race. And last year, for the first time in history, Wimbledon awarded equal prize money for its prestigious men and women’s tennis tournaments. But a few breakthroughs for women in the world of sports are not nearly enough to rectify an inequity that puts women at severe economic risk."
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The 110th Congress is working to close the pay gap between women and men. Currently, two of the key initiatives in this area are:
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, H.R. 2831. This bill is key for women and other workers – restoring a basic protection against pay discrimination, by rectifying the May 2007 Ledbetter v Goodyear Supreme Court decision that overturned precedent and made it much more difficult for workers to pursue pay discrimination claims. The bill simply restores the longstanding interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and other discrimination statutes, thereby protecting women and other workers. The House passed this bill on July 31, 2007. This week, the Senate will take up the House-passed version of the bill – in an attempt to send the bill directly to the President’s desk.
Read the Gavel's coverage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act>>
The Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 1338. This critical bill would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by providing more effective remedies to women who are not being paid equal wages for doing equal work. The bill would also prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers; require the Department of Labor to enhance outreach and training efforts to work with employers to eliminate pay disparities; and create a new grant program to help strengthen the negotiation skills of girls and women. The Paycheck Fairness Act currently has 226 cosponsors. In 2007, the Education and Labor Committee held a hearing on the bill and the committee hopes to mark up the bill in the coming weeks.
DETAILED SUMMARY OF THE LILLY LEDBETTER FAIR PAY ACT - H.R. 2831
On July 31, 2007, the House passed H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This is a critical bill for women, rectifying the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that made it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims. This week, the Senate will take up the House-passed version of the bill – in an attempt to send the bill directly to the President’s desk.
In May 2007, the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which tosses aside longstanding prior law and makes it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims. On May 29, 2007, the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 ruling that would make it significantly harder for women and other workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay. The Court ruled that since Lilly Ledbetter, a long-time employee of Goodyear, had not filed her charge of pay discrimination within 180 days of her employer’s initial decision to pay her less, she could not receive any relief.
By its ruling, the Supreme Court stripped Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of much of its potency. As a New York Times editorial (5/31/07) pointed out, “The Supreme Court struck a blow for discrimination this week by stripping a key civil rights law of much of its potency. The majority opinion … forced an unreasonable reading of the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years.”
In overturning the Supreme Court, this bill simply restores the longstanding interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court ruling overturned longstanding precedent. Under longstanding precedent and the interpretation of the EEOC, every paycheck resulting from an earlier discriminatory pay decision is considered a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and other key anti-discrimination statutes. Therefore, as long as a worker files within 180 days of a discriminatory paycheck, their charges are considered as timely. The legislation would also clarify that, once a worker files a charge, he or she needs not keep filing new charges with each new paycheck.
Lilly Ledbetter’s case was a clear case of pay discrimination on the basis of sex. Lilly Ledbetter worked for nearly 20 years as a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company facility in Alabama. She sued the company after learning that she was paid less than her male counterparts at the facility, despite having more experience than several of them. A jury found that her employer had unlawfully discriminated against her on the basis of sex. However, the Supreme Court ruled that Ledbetter had waited too long to sue, despite the fact that she filed a charge with the EEOC as soon as she received an anonymous note alerting her to pay discrimination. The court ruled that, since Ledbetter did not raise a claim within 180 days of the employer’s initial decision to pay her less, she could not receive any relief. Employees in Ledbetter’s position would be forced to live with discriminatory paychecks for the rest of their careers under this Supreme Court decision.
This Supreme Court decision ignores the realities of the workplace. The majority in this decision failed to take into account the realities of the workplace. Employees generally do not know enough about what their co-workers earn, or how pay decisions are made, to file a complaint precisely when discrimination first occurs. Indeed, in a large proportion of American companies, salaries are confidential. The court’s new rules would make it extraordinarily difficult for women and other victims of pay discrimination to sue under Title VII.
In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg urged Congress to quickly pass a law correcting this damaging decision. As the New York Times (5/30/07) reported, “In a vigorous dissenting opinion that she read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the majority opinion ‘overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination.’ She said that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received a lower raise than others. … Justice Ginsburg noted that even a small differential ‘will expand exponentially over an employee’s working life if raises are set as a percentage of prior pay.’” In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg invited Congress to correct the Court’s misinterpretation of Title VII: “[t]he ball is in Congress’ court … the Legislature may act to correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.”
Finally, the bill maintains the law’s current statute of limitations and limits on back pay recovery. Contrary to opponents’ claims, the bill does not eliminate the statute of limitations. Under this bill, an employee must still file a charge within the statutory filing period after receiving a discriminatory paycheck. Moreover, employees have no incentive to sit on their rights. The bill maintains Title VII’s limitation of two years for back pay recovery. The longer an employee waits, the more back pay is rendered unrecoverable.
DETAILED SUMMARY OF THE PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT - H.R. 1338
The Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 1338, takes affirmative steps to eliminate gender-based wage discrimination and ensure that women earn what men earn for doing the same job. The legislation adheres to the current work standards under the Equal Pay Act but would reform the procedures and remedies for enforcing the law.
Specifically, the Paycheck Fairness Act:
(1) Enhances the Enforcement of Equal Pay Requirements
a. In suits where a female employee alleges wage discrimination, the employer could raise an affirmative defense to justify the disparate treatment only by demonstrating that a bona fide factor other than sex, such as education, or experience and one that is related to the position in question and furthers a legitimate business purpose is the reason for the difference in pay;
i. The DeLauro proposal imposes a stricter burden on an employer who wishes to affirmatively defend its actions by citing non-gender reasons for the difference in wages. Currently, under the Equal Pay Act once a prima facie case has been established by the employee, the burden shifts to the employer who can justify the pay differential by citing a differential based on any factor other than sex. This affirmative defense has been used as a broad catch-all exception that embraces an almost limitless number of factors, so long as they do not involve sex.
b. Employers would be prohibited from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers;
c. Female employees would be able to sue for compensatory and punitive damages. Currently, the Equal Pay Act only provides for back pay and double that amount for a willful violation.
(2) Provides for Enhanced Training
a. Subject to the availability of funds, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs would be required to provide training to Commission employees on matters involving discrimination in the payment of wages;
b. The Secretary of Labor would be authorized, after consultation with the Secretary of Education, to establish a grant program to carry out negotiation skills training programs for girls and women. This training would help girls and women strengthen their negotiations skills to obtain higher salaries and the best compensation packages possible.
(3) Provides for Research, Education and Outreach
a. The Secretary of Labor would be directed to conduct studies and provide information to employers, labor organizations and the general public concerning ways to eliminate pay disparities.
(4) Establishes an Employer Recognition Program and Provides Technical Assistance
a. The Secretary of Labor would be directed to develop guidelines for employers to evaluate job categories based on objective criteria such as educational and skill requirements, working conditions, and decisionmaking responsibility.
b. The Secretary of Labor would also be required to establish a program to provide recognition for employers who adjust their wage scales to ensure that women are paid fairly in comparison to men.
c. The Secretary of Labor would be afforded the ability to provide technical assistance to an employer in carrying out wage evaluations.