Equal Pay

California just enacted the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, joining New York and Hawaii as states that care for those who care for the vulnerable. Domestic workers are an important part of today’s work force. These workers – 95 percent of whom are women – care for the household, the children and grandparents, the sick and people with disabilities. In the words of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, they do “the work that makes all other work possible.” And yet, they are often paid very low wages, and work in difficult conditions.

After 7 years of advocacy and two vetoes, California’s domestic workers will finally receive a very important workplace protection: the right to overtime pay. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can be for workers who spend all day taking care of children, the elderly and the infirm. The bill of rights is estimated to cover 200,000 California housekeepers, child-care providers, and caregivers. Read more »

Today, the Census Bureau released data from the American Community Survey, a survey that provides median earnings for men and women by state. Based on that data, NWLC has calculated the wage gap for each state. Some of our key findings:

• In 2012, Wyoming again had the largest wage gap, with women working full time, year round typically making just 63.8 percent of what their male counterparts made.
• Both Louisiana (66.9 percent) and West Virginia (69.9 percent) also had wage gaps of 30 cents or more. The gap in Wyoming amounts to $18,780 annually — equivalent to more than half of the typical woman's earnings in Wyoming in 2012.
• In 2012, the District of Columbia once again had the smallest wage gap — women working full time, year round in the nation’s capital, were typically paid 90.1 percent of what their male counterparts were paid. 

Not too long ago, employers advertised for higher-paying jobs in a section of the newspaper labeled, “Help Wanted—Male.” When Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor graduated from law school, they got no job offers. And, in the more recent past, when Michele A. Roberts went to court as a public defender, she was often mistaken for someone charged with a crime, a mistake she attributes to her race and gender. Ms. Roberts is now a Partner at Skadden.

These attitudes about women in the workplace have not gone away. Their vestiges can be seen today in women’s continued lower pay for the same job; segregation into a set of jobs that are perceived as “women’s work,” the vast majority of which are low paying; and exclusion and underrepresentation of women in high-wage jobs. And that doesn’t even cover the severe penalty that mothers face in the workplace, simply for being mothers. Each of these factors depresses women’s wages, and each is linked to practices and policies that are woven into the fabric of the American workplace.

So it’s hard not to feel a little bewildered when discussions about the wage gap—which has stayed stagnant at 77 cents for over a decade—devolve into assertions that we should chalk it all up to women’s choices and go home. Read more »

77 cents on the dollar – does that have a familiar ring to you? You guessed it—it’s the amount that women working full time, year round typically made for every dollar that men made in 2012. It’s now been more than a decade with no progress on narrowing the wage gap. That means that American women have been working for over a decade without seeing the wage gap diminish. The wage gap typically cost women $11,608 in 2012. Based on the 2012 wage gap, over the course of a 40-year career a woman would lose $464,300.

The wage gap is even worse for women of color:

• In 2012, African-American women working full time, year round were typically paid only 64 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
• Hispanic women working full time, year round were typically paid only 54 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.

Because of a new rule out today from the Department of Labor, home care workers will no longer be left out of the basic wage and hour protections guaranteed by the FLSA. Today’s rule extends wage and hour protections to all direct care workers employed by home care agencies and other third parties. This is excellent news, and it’s about time!

The exclusion of home care workers from the FLSA is emblematic of all that is wrong with the way our society values (or doesn’t value) women’s work. This 90% female workforce does vitally important work for their clients, such as bathing, clothing, and administering medication. Yet, this work – like work in many female-dominated jobs – is among the most poorest paid. Home care workers typically earn below $10 an hour.

In 1975, only one year after Congress extended the FLSA’s protections to domestic workers employed by individual households, the Department of Labor took these protections away from home care workers through an expansive reading of the “companionship” exemption. This interpretation was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007, and home care workers and their advocates have been clamoring for the rule released today ever since. Read more »

It’s been fifty years since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 made clear that women should receive equal pay for equal work, but women are still paid less than men in nearly every occupation.

And because employee salaries are often kept secret, it is difficult for women to find out when they are being paid less than their male colleagues, and therefore difficult to challenge pay discrepancies. In fact, over 61 percent of private-sector employees report that discussing wages is either prohibited or discouraged by their employers. Employer policies and practices that prevent workers from discussing their pay mean that a woman worker could be paid less year after year than the man across the hall doing her same job and never know it.

One week ago today, New Jersey took a huge step toward solving this problem when Chris Christie signed into law a bill prohibiting retaliation against employees who disclose salary information for the purpose of investigating whether pay decisions are being made unfairly. Effective immediately, the new law prohibits employer retaliation against employees for discussing information such as job title, occupational category, rate of compensation, and employee benefits. Read more »

We all know it can be hard to come back to work after a long weekend. For those of you fighting for women’s equality, here are 10 reasons to roll up your sleeves on the Tuesday after Labor Day: Read more »

Here’s a little story about an inspiring group of workers to help jumpstart your week after the long Labor Day weekend.

Last week I spoke with folks from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – an awe-inspiring group making extraordinary progress on behalf of tomato pickers in Florida. Here is what I learned:

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) have brought together 11 of the major food retailers that buy tomatoes to agree that they will only buy from growers who sign a Fair Food Code of Conduct that includes complying with health & safety, wage and hour, sexual harassment and other labor and employment laws, and in many cases that they will adhere to standards beyond what the law requires. This put pressure on the growers to sign the Fair Food Agreement, and in 2010, 90% of Florida’s tomato growers joined the program. Participating tomato growers show a video to tomato pickers when they are hired that explains their rights under the agreement, and workers can call a 24-hour complaint hotline when their rights are violated! Read more »

This afternoon I’m headed to the Lincoln Memorial for the 50th Anniversary celebration of the March on Washington. Today’s event is both a commemoration and call to action. Thousands are gathering to remember the 1963 March and to outline the remaining civil rights agenda. Read more »

As the single mother of two young children, Losia Nyankale’s job is what keeps her family afloat. But between earning low wages and having no paid sick days, Losia is just one child care emergency away from losing her job. This pressure made it difficult for Losia to care for her mother when she suffered a stroke, and it forced Losia to return to work immediately after the birth of her second child—despite her doctor’s orders. Losia works long hours to be able to afford her basic living expenses and child care. And she often finds herself in an all-too familiar bind: if she picks up more shifts to earn a better living, the child care costs that she can barely afford now will rise, and she’ll have even less time with her family. Losia would like to go back to school to improve her situation, but the combination of low wages, lack of paid sick days, and lack of affordable child care, keep that dream from coming true for now.

For many years Teresa worked on call as a banquet server and had an extremely difficult time arranging child care at the last minute for her children because of her unpredictable schedule. She found herself turning down jobs or quitting jobs where she wasn’t able to arrange child care, even though she needed the income badly. Like Losia, Teresa was a single mom who often didn’t earn enough money to pay for care. Read more »