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For Immediate Release: Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Contact: Ranit Schmelzer or Mary Robbins, 202-588-5180
AMERICAN WOMEN DESERVE FAIR PAY
Senate Must Pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Hutchison Alternative Falls Short
(Washington, DC) Below is a statement from Marcia D. Greenberger, Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center, on the Hutchison amendment to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The Senate is expected to debate and vote on the amendment, offered by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), as early as today.
“The Hutchison amendment weakens pay discrimination law, rather than restoring it to where it has been for decades. It does not reinstate the longstanding principle that employees may challenge each discriminatory paycheck they receive.
“The Ledbetter decision created a draconian rule that employees have 180 days from the time of their first discriminatory paycheck to file a formal government complaint and otherwise forfeit their rights to receive equal pay for equal work. The 180-day clock runs even where the employee wants to try to work it out with the employer or if the discriminatory pay persists or becomes worse over months or years. The Hutchison amendment leaves this unfair and unacceptable rule in place, with just one very limited exception – the 180 days could be extended only if the employee can prove that she did not have and ‘should not have been expected to have’ a reasonable suspicion of any discrimination.
“Instead of helping Lilly Ledbetter and employees like her to challenge their rights to equal pay, the Hutchison amendment would impose additional burdens on the victims of pay discrimination to prove a negative: that they had no reason to have known about the discrimination. And it would give the employer a free ride to continue the pay discrimination and shortchange their employees. This is an especially cruel blow when women only earn about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men.”
A fact sheet on the Hutchison amendment is available here. To speak with Marcia D. Greenberger or Lilly Ledbetter, contact Ranit Schmelzer or Mary Robbins at 202-588-5180.
For more information about the campaign for pay equity, visit www.nwlc.org/fairpay.
A fact sheet on the wage gap is available here: http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Pay_Equity_Fact_Sheet_Nov2008.pdf
A fact sheet on Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. is available here: http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/Broad_Ledbetter_Fact_Sheet_111008.pdf
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