Ending Gender-Based Wage Discrimination
Op-Ed
Ending Gender-Based Wage Discrimination
Op-ed by Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Urges Immediate Passage into Law of the Paycheck Fairness Act and The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Forty-five years ago, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act to end wage discrimination against women who, on average, only earned 60 cents to every dollar earned by men.
Since then, however, despite enactment of the Equal Pay Act, women have only managed to narrow this wage gap by less than 20 percent. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women now earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by men, for doing the same job with the same responsibilities.
It is critical to close this unfair wage gap, which often has a devastating economic impact on a woman's life. This is particularly true upon retirement because pensions and Social Security benefits are based on a person's life earnings. The Institute of Women's Policy Research estimates that this disparity costs a woman anywhere from $400,000 to $2 million in her lifetime. As a result of this loss of income, the Older Women's League reports that 70 percent of older adults living in poverty are women.
For these significant reasons, I was proud to join the majority of my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 31, 2008 in passing The Paycheck Fairness Act. This measure, which is now pending in the U.S. Senate, takes the necessary steps to strengthen the Equal Pay Act and close the many loopholes that have continued to negatively impact the economic security of women.
The Paycheck Fairness Act creates a training program to help women strengthen their negotiation skills. It enforces equal pay laws for federal contractors. The measure requires the Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate pay disparities by enhancing outreach and training efforts. The bill prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers. Finally, the legislation allows women to sue for punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages now available under the Equal Pay Act.
A couple weeks before the House passed the Equal Pay Act, I had the pleasure of gathering with many of my colleagues in the House and Senate at a rally on Capitol Hill in support of both this measure and the pending Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. We were joined at that rally by Lilly Ledbetter herself, who provided first-hand testimony about the years of gender-based wage discrimination she endured while employed as a supervisor for a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. After nearly two decades, an anonymous note revealed that she had been paid less than male co-workers who held the same job, including recent hires with less job experience.
To fully understand the need for final passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, it is crucial to know the significant roadblock she experienced when trying to regain the lost compensation owed to her.
Ms. Ledbetter brought an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against Goodyear. A jury awarded her nearly $225,000, but in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ms. Ledbetter could not collect the wages Goodyear owed to her. Under the ruling, in order to enforce her right to be paid fairly, Ms. Ledbetter would have had to have filed a wage-discrimination complaint within 180 days of when the discrimination began - impossible considering she did not learn she was being paid less for the same work until years later.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would clarify that every paycheck or other compensation resulting, in whole or in part, from an earlier discriminatory pay decision constitutes a violation of the Civil Rights Act. As long as workers file their charges within 180 days of a discriminatory paycheck, their charges would be considered timely. This measure passed the U.S. House of Representatives with my support on July 31, 2007, but awaits passage in the Senate.
As your Member of Congress, I will continue to work to pass both The Paycheck Fairness Act and The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. We must work together in the House, the Senate, the White House, and, above all, in our workplaces, to end gender-based wage discrimination, once and for all.
About Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard:
A political pioneer, in 1992, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard became the first Mexican-American woman elected to Congress. Before that, she represented the 56th Assembly District of California for six years.
Congresswoman Roybal-Allard serves as a Member of the House Appropriations Committee. She is the first Latina in U.S. history to be appointed to the Appropriations Committee, which controls the purse strings of the federal government. The congresswoman serves on three influential subcommittees - the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies and the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
Widely known and respected on Capitol Hill and in her district as a consensus builder, Congresswoman Roybal-Allard also served as chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation in 1997 and 1998 - the first woman to serve in this role. Later, during the 106th Congress in 1999 and 2000, she went on to serve as the first female Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
She was born and raised in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles and is the eldest daughter of Lucille Beserra Roybal and the late Congressman Edward R. Roybal, a Member of Congress for 30 years.
The multicultural 34th Congressional District includes: Bell; Bellflower; Bell Gardens; Boyle Heights; Commerce; Cudahy; Downey; Downtown Los Angeles; Huntington Park; Little Tokyo; Maywood; South Park; Vernon; Walnut Park; and portions of Chinatown, East Los Angeles, Florence, Pico Union, and Westlake.
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