Labor & Employment Law

Call Senate Now for Paycheck Fairness

By James Parks

Before Congress adjourns to go home for the 2010 elections, the Senate needs to step up and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182) to help close the wage gap between women and men. The House passed the bill last year, but it has been bottled up in the Senate by Republican obstructionists. The Paycheck Fairness Act is likely to come up for a vote in the Senate before Oct. 1.  (Call 1-877-667-6650 toll free, and tell your senators it?s time to do the right thing and pass Paycheck Fairness for women and their families. Ask them to pass the Paycheck Fairness Ac t this session with no amendments)

In a live webcast this morning, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the legislation will benefit everyone, not just women workers.

It?s about our families. There are many women who lead and are the breadwinners for their family. A woman?s earnings affect her family?s ability to afford healthy food, rent and a college education for her children. Equal pay is not only a sound policy, but it is the right thing to do.

The bill is badly needed. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wages of full-time, year-round workers in 2008 stood at $35,745 for women and $46,367 for men. The wage gap is even worse for women of color. In 2008, the earnings for African American women were $31,489, 67.9 percent of men?s earnings (a drop from 68.7 percent in 2007); and Latinas? earnings were $26,846, 58 percent of men?s earnings (a drop from 59 percent in 2007).

If enacted, the Paycheck Fairness Act would provide the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities and deter wage discrimination by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages to co-workers.

Lilly Ledbetter, who joined Solis on the webcast, said the Paycheck Fairness Act would have been helpful in her nine-year fight to get paid what her male counterparts made. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act corrected the U.S. Supreme Court?s decision that Ledbetter, a 20-year employee of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., had sued too late when she discovered her pay was far below that of men doing similar work.  

The law also could provide a new generation of young women workers the tools they need to move closer to pay equity, Ledbetter said:

What I find on college campuses is that the young women and young men don?t realize we?re so far behind [on equal pay]. The [young men] really believe that when they get married their wives will get a job and [be able] to make [a salary] equal to his. That?s not the case.

Solis said passage of the bill named for Ledbetter was just the first step in doing the right thing.

Congress has a chance to take the next important step by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 21, 2010 (boomark / email).