The Time is NOW for Equal Pay

By Leecia Eve on 03/15/2010 @ 06:00 PM

Assume you work hard every day and that you are being paid fairly and legally. Now imagine that all of a sudden your salary is cut by almost twenty-five percent. How does that feel? How would it affect you and your family?

Now, cut your salary instead by almost a third and then by more than forty percent. What’s the impact? My guess is not only do the “extras” go by the wayside but your ability to provide the basic necessities for you and your family – from health insurance to housing to food on the table – is negatively affected in a major way.

Well, that’s the circumstance in which millions of American women find themselves and at a time when American families need greater, not fewer, resources to survive and prosper. Today, women make on average 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. African American women earn just 69 cents for every dollar, and Latinas earn just 59 cents for every dollar a man makes, more than forty percent less.

Not only are the short-term effects of these pay inequities dramatic, but the National Committee on Pay Equity estimates that these pay disparities cost a woman anywhere from $700,000 to $2 million in reduced earnings over her lifetime.

Fixing these inequities and finally closing the pay gap between women and men was the subject last Thursday of a major hearing on Capitol Hill. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP Committee), chaired by Senator Tom Harkin, held a hearing entitled “A Fair Share for All: Pay Equity in the New American Workplace.” Witness after witness testified regarding continued pay inequities and called upon the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation that the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly in January of last year.

The Paycheck Fairness Act – sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski in the Senate and in the House by Representative Rosa DeLauro (and introduced by then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in January of last year) – would update and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages.

Among other provisions, the bill would also allow women to receive the same remedies for gender-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subject to discrimination based on race and national origin, and would reinstate the collection of gender-based wage data to help monitor progress toward equal pay.

At the hearing, there was also significant testimony in support of the Fair Pay Act, introduced by Senator Harkin and Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, which would require employers to provide equal pay for jobs that are equivalent in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.

One of the more engaging parts of the hearing was when Senator Barbara Mikulski, a member of the HELP Committee who is also chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees funding for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), asked Stuart Ishimaru, Acting Chairman of the EEOC, about the backlog of more than 100,000 cases at the agency. What became clear is that while the EEOC is starting to make progress in reducing the backlog, a major reason for its existence in the first place is that for eight years the EEOC lost more than twenty-five percent of its front-line staff. It also outsourced its call center, but without sufficient EEOC oversight. These changes took place, despite the fact that the EEOC is the primary enforcement agency for the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Thanks to the current Administration’s strong support of the EEOC and the recent budgetary support the EEOC has received, progress is being made. This fact underscores, however, that reducing pay inequities requires not only better laws but also the resources and a strong commitment to enforce those laws.

Within the past year, other progress has also been made. On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which superseded the United State Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc. In that case, the Supreme Court broke with long-established practice and precedent and held that a compensation discrimination charge had to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory pay-setting decision (sometimes 300 days depending on state or local law), which the EEOC Acting Chairman testified was “an unrealistic expectation given the secrecy that usually surrounds pay decisions.” This legislation, introduced by Senator Mikulski in the Senate, was vitally important as it restored federal law to recognizing “the reality of wage discrimination” and provided that each paycheck that has discriminatory compensation is an actionable wrong under EEOC federal statutes, regardless of when the discrimination began.

And last month, President Obama announced the establishment of the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force “to improve compliance, public education, and enforcement of equal pay laws.”

Yes, we’ve come a long way in reducing the pay gap since President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963, but pay gaps of twenty-three percent, thirty-one percent, and forty-one percent for millions of women mean that we still have a long way to go. We need action now. As Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress, testified: “There could not be a more important time to address the issue of pay equity. Women are now half of all workers on U.S. payrolls and two-thirds of mothers are bringing home at least a quarter of their family’s earnings. This means that the gender pay gap is not just a woman’s issue, it is a family issue that affects millions of young, old and middle-aged Americans who rely on a woman breadwinner or co-breadwinner in their family.”

For the benefit of American families and all of us, pay equity and equal pay for equal work need to become as American as apple pie.

To watch a video of the hearing and review or download the witness statements, click here.

To learn more about work-family issues generally, check out the No Limits website.

The No Limits Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization, which means we cannot post material that is political or partisan. Comments or postings reflect the opinions of the author only, and in no way reflect the position of No Limits. No Limits does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any posting. If you send a blog post to No Limits and we publish it on the site, we will note you as the author but we cannot pay for any submissions. Because of space considerations, not all posts submitted may be published. We are not responsible for the content of or for third party rights in material posted by you. For more information, please visit our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.