Employment

As a twenty-something woman with student loan debt, I think about money A LOT.  So do my friends. It’s not uncommon for one of us to ask if we can hang out at someone’s house rather than at a happy hour to save money. It used to be that when we got together, sharing tips for saving and sympathizing about financial struggles were common topics of conversation, but talking about our pay was not. That is, until one day when we decided to set discomfort aside and put numbers on the table. It turned out that one of my friends was being paid significantly less than those of us with similar job responsibilities.  That discussion gave her the information – and motivation – that she needed to successfully ask for and get a raise. 

While this conversation between friends was a little uncomfortable, talking about pay can lead to much more than discomfort for many workers: it can result in discipline or even termination.  More than 60% of private sector-employees report that discussing their pay is prohibited or discouraged by their employers.

When employees can’t talk to their coworkers about what they are making, they have no way of knowing if they are being paid less. The Paycheck Fairness Act will ensure that employees can discuss pay without fear of retaliation. Read more »

Oh, glorious spring! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all of the metaphorical references to the significance of the season begin again. It’s time to renew, revive, recharge! Unfortunately, federal efforts to collect employee compensation data more closely resemble a tree in winter: frozen and dormant; its fruit trapped in its branches.

A coalition of advocates for equal pay recently sent a letter to President Obama highlighting the problem:

[T]here currently is no mechanism for federal enforcement agencies to detect widespread wage discrimination, even when it occurs in our nation’s largest employers.

If alarm bells aren’t going off inside your brain right now, here’s why they should be:

1. 50 years after the Equal Pay Act became law, women are still paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to a man; yet, the government does not have the basic information it needs to enforce this law;
2.  The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) already collect data to aid in the enforcement of other civil rights laws but still do not collect information about pay; and
3. The vast majority of Americans support federal actions that give women more tools to get fair pay in the workplace.

Last year I had the pleasure of meeting AnnMarie Duchon. She testified before the House Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee that after learning she was being paid unfairly she was able to confirm the information with her coworkers and negotiate with her boss for a salary increase. Pretty impressive, right?

But unfortunately, the conversations had by AnnMarie would be banned in a lot of workplaces. In fact, a 2010 IWPR poll found that around half of private sector workers believe that they cannot share their salaries.

Policies and practices that keep women in the dark about pay disparities diminish their ability to enforce their rights to fair pay and allow unfair pay practices to flourish. My best evidence? Lilly Ledbetter. Goodyear, a federal contractor, had one of these insane punitive pay secrecy policies and Lilly Ledbetter worked there almost 20 years before learning that she was being paid less than her male coworkers. In case you’re counting, the money she lost not only hurt her ability to pay for basics like groceries and utilities, she is still losing money to this day because the discriminatory pay is reflected in her retirement. Read more »

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably know that the wage gap in the U.S. hasn’t budged in the last decade, and that women still get paid 77 cents, on average, for every dollar paid to a man. One southwestern state is taking the lead on closing this gap. New Mexico – the Land of Enchantment – is the home of the yucca flower, the black bear, thriving Hispanic culture, and now groundbreaking fair pay legislation!

In New Mexico, women typically make only 79 cents for every dollar a man makes. African American and Hispanic women do considerably worse: at 60 cents and 53 cents, respectively. In an effort to close this gap, Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico signed the Fair Pay for Women Act into law on March 16, 2013. Read more »

To mark Equal Pay Day, NWLC's Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment, and Becka Wall, Program Assistant for Communications sat down for a chat on the success we've had on equal pay – and what we need to do next.

Becka: Hi, Fatima! Thanks so much for sitting and chatting with me about Equal Pay. I feel like this has been such a long and uphill battle. Where does the fight for equal pay stand right now?

Fatima: Since we passed the Equal Pay Act, the wage gap has narrowed by 18 cents. And there has been some clear progress – no longer will you see separate gender-based pay classifications, for example. But the wage gap has not budged for a decade, so there is serious work to do.

Fifty years since the passing of the Equal Pay Act is a great time to look at where we are – assess how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go.

Becka: What are some of the major causes that contribute to the issue of unequal pay?

Fatima: Women are still paid less for the same job, and it’s impossible in some spaces to get salary information. Some workplaces actual ban women from talking about their own wages. Women are concentrated in occupations that pay less. There are also a number of barriers to higher, paid traditionally male jobs. And there is a continuing penalty for caregivers – studies have shown that women who are mothers are paid less than men who are fathers. Read more »

April 9 is Equal Pay Day –the day more than three months into the year when women’s wages finally catch up to what men were paid in the previous year. In “honor” of the occasion National Women’s Law Center is releasing fresh data and analysis on the persistent wage gap between men and women.

This is also a big birthday year – something actually worth celebrating – the Equal Pay Act turns 50 in June! But on the eve of that happy occasion, here’s another downer: As reported in The Wage Gap by State for Women Overall, 50 years in, the wage gap is still going strong all across the U.S.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act became law, we’ve narrowed the wage gap by only 18 cents, and in the last ten years that gap hasn’t closed at all. For the last decade, the median annual earnings of women have lagged behind men – women working full time, year round have made roughly 77 cents for every dollar made by men working full time, year round. We’ve still got a whopping 23 cents to go before we close the wage gap. Even if the wheels of progress were to start turning again today, if we only close the gap another 18 cents in the next 50 years, we’ve got 64 years before the wage gap closes. Read more »

Great news! Yesterday, a bill that will protect pregnant workers who need workplace accommodations passed in Maryland. This victory is due to the hard work of local advocates, especially the ACLU of Maryland. Now, when pregnant workers in Maryland need a simple accommodation to be able to continue to work safely – for example, a stool to sit on, or more frequent bathroom breaks – they will have clear-cut legal protection from being forced onto unpaid leave or even terminated. We have already seen the success of laws like these in protecting pregnant workers in states like California. Plus, experience shows accommodating pregnant workers, like accommodating individuals with disabilities, can be good for the bottom line. As a Maryland resident, I am very proud of my state. Read more »

This morning's Census data signal positive growth in manufacturing, but there's a hidden part of this story that new NWLC analysis of jobs data reveals: women are being left behind. 

The Census data show that new durable goods orders were up in February and that orders have increased five of the last six months. But women are not sharing in this manufacturing recovery: 

• Manufacturing added 517,000 net jobs from January 2010 to February 2013. Men gained 535,000 jobs, while women actually lost 18,000 jobs. 
• This trend is not a correction for men's recession losses — during the recession men and women both experienced manufacturing job losses proportionate to their share of the field. 

I’ve been a longtime fan of the USA network TV show Suits – it’s set at a (fictional) law firm in New York, Pearson Hardman, and focuses on the exploits of a witty college dropout who has never been to law school and the firm partner who had the audacity to hire him as an associate. Last Thursday night’s episode featured Pearson Hardman taking on a class action lawsuit accusing a fictional company, Folsom Foods, of gender discrimination: they failed to promote qualified women. One of the lawyers on the case noticed that when women were denied for promotions, the company used the following descriptors to justify the choice: “high-strung,” “sensitive,” “aggressive,” and “abrasive.” These women were being passed over for promotions for reasons unrelated to their performance or their ability to fulfill their job responsibilities – but rather due to stereotypes about women in the workplace. Read more »

Given the fact that the anniversary of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was yesterday, it seems only fitting that this past week’s episode of NBC’s Parks & Recreation focused on gender equality in the workplace.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Parks & Recreation (or Parks & Rec, as it is known lovingly among its fan base) is about Leslie Knope, a mid-level government employee in a small town in Indiana. She is dedicated to her job and the town she grew up in, and many feminists and TV fans have lauded the show as an example of a great feminist character. And for good reason – Leslie is dedicated, passionate, and very human (she has an absolutely adorable relationship with her fiancée, Ben, and a deep love of waffles and whipped cream that I can 100% relate to). Leslie has grown from simply a government employee to a City Council Member, and she aspires to climb the ranks all the way to President. Plus, the show is just absolutely hilarious.

This week, the episode opened with the ladies of the Pawnee, Indiana Parks Department in a meeting with the first female city councilmember. She lamented about the fact that her male counterparts used to keep a calendar of her menstrual cycles – something that sounds beefed up for the sake of comedy, but actually hits closer to hope than you might think: In October, CNN posted (and quickly took down) a story saying that hormones can make female voters vote more liberally because it makes them “feel sexier.” Read more »