Paycheck Fairness Act

PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2008)

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Mr. ANDREWS. I would like to thank my friend from California for yielding. This bill is for the woman who runs the office, who makes all the important decisions, without whom the place couldn't function; who one day comes in and discovers that a man, usually a man younger than her, has been brought in and given a higher title, a higher pay, and fewer responsibilities. And she goes to work and says, this isn't fair. I'm doing a job that is actually more important than this other person and getting paid less for it.

Now it's true that the statutes presently say you have to get equal pay for equal work. But it's also true that the remedies are so limited under existing law that many women can't get an attorney to represent them in their case so it never gets brought.

The best idea in this bill is for the first time it gives robust and full remedies to help that woman so that if she is able to prove her claim that she is underpaid relative to the work that she is doing, she will be fully and fairly compensated, and out of that compensation will come the funds to get her the competent representation that she deserves. The woman who's the office manager who doesn't make as much as the executive vice president for administration.

Well, I will tell you, in my life, Mr. Chairman, I benefited from a lot of women who are office managers that don't have fancy titles but without whom institutions could not run. This bill is for that woman and for her daughters so that they do not have the situation where they are devalued, debased, degraded, and disrespected in the workplace.

It is long overdue that we vote ``yes'' on this bill, and I would urge colleagues on both sides to do that.

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