Equal Pay

A long holiday weekend is nearly upon us, and I’ll admit, my mind is wandering a bit today to non-work-related thoughts of beaches and barbecues. But before we all head off to celebrate a Labor Day free of labor, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the origins of this end-of-summer tradition.

According to the Department of Labor, “Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” The first Labor Day was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City, and was organized by the Central Labor Union, which later urged labor organizations in other cities to celebrate an annual “workingmen’s holiday” on the first Monday in September.

Of course, today we recognize that it is not only “workingmen,” but also millions of working women who have made great contributions “to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”  After decades of historic strides, women now make up about half of the U.S. workforce, and have entered into fields from manufacturing to medicine in numbers that many would not have imagined a generation ago. Read more »

The New York Times today reports that single women’s votes may be key to this year’s presidential election. “Single women are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups — there are 1.8 million more now than just two years ago,” the Times explains. “They make up a quarter of the voting-age population nationally, and even more in several swing states, including Nevada.” But single women have traditionally registered and turned out to vote at relatively low rates, which means their full political power remains untapped.

It’s time to change that. The results of the presidential, congressional, and state elections this year will shape single women’s lives in a host of ways. The elections will determine whether single mothers receive the supports they need to make ends meet. They will determine whether women’s insurance covers contraception without a co-pay. The elections will determine whether the economy will work for single women who have experienced extremely high rates of unemployment through the recession and recovery and whether policymakers will prioritize fair pay for women. Read more »

One year ago, in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the Supreme Court, in a deeply divided 5-4 decision, put severe limits on workers' ability to come together to fight workplace discrimination. Yesterday, Betty Dukes, the named plaintiff in that lawsuit, came to Washington to ask Congress to remove the obstacles the Supreme Court placed in the way of ordinary Americans seeking their day in court.

Betty Dukes at the press conference introducing the EEORA

The Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act, introduced by Senator Al Franken and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, with 22 co-sponsors in the Senate and 38 in the House, would do just that, by creating a new avenue for workers to bring group actions to challenge company-wide discrimination. Read more »

Yesterday afternoon Representatives and Senators came together with Betty Dukes and anti-discrimination advocates to call on Congress to pass the Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act (EEORA).

Senate sponsors Franken and Blumenthal joined House sponsor Representative DeLauro to introduce the bill, seeking to remedy the damage done by the Dukes v. Wal-Mart decision, handed down by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision a year ago yesterday.

Senator Franken spoke about how the decision is a barrier to employees trying to come together as a group to enforce antidiscrimination laws against employers. These cases, Senator Franken said, are important because employees who band together are much more powerful than individuals. Senator Franken explained that EEORA creates "group actions," which restore the ability for workers to band together to challenge widescale discrimination.

This legislation is necessary, Senator Blumenthal (pictured above, Senator Franken in background) added, because the Dukes v. Wal-Mart decision created barriers that "set back the cause of justice in this country." Read more »

Tell Your Members of Congress to Stand with the Women of Wal-Mart           Betty Dukes with Senator Franken, lead Senate sponsor of the bill           Co-sponsor the Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act of 2012.

One year ago today, we told you devastating news: the Supreme Court had ruled against Betty Dukes and the courageous women of Wal-Mart.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Wal-Mart women could not band together as a single class to challenge discrimination in pay and promotions.

But that's not the end of the story.

For the last year, the National Women's Law Center and advocates across the country have pushed Congress for a solution. Today, Congress offered one!

Tell your Members of Congress to stand by the women of Wal-Mart by co-sponsoring the Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act of 2012.

Getting co-sponsors on this bill will help it to gain momentum — and we need you to help us move forward!

So what would this bill do?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Restoration Act of 2012 would remove the obstacles the Supreme Court placed in the way of ordinary Americans seeking their day in court. Read more »

Eduardo Porter’s article last week in The New York Times, Motherhood Still a Cause of Pay Inequality, has a good discussion of the gender wage gap – it highlights the slowed progress in closing the gap and discusses many of the issues that contribute to women’s lower pay including occupational segregation, caregiving responsibilities, and discrimination.

However, Porter gets it wrong when he says that passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, which failed to get a vote in the Senate last week, might actually increase women’s unemployment. As Fatima Goss Graves debunked this myth in our blog:

Opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act complain that the bill will hurt the economy and increase unemployment among women. These are not new arguments when it comes to fair employment laws – in fact, some of these same arguments were made 50 years ago when the Equal Pay Act itself was passed.

Welcome to another roundup! This week we have stories about gender-based wage discrimination for physicians, one popular website’s efforts to transform the male-dominated engineering field, and a 1963 PSA depicting Batgirl battling unequal pay…which is awesome.

The 49th Anniversary of the passage of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1963 has led to the internet re-circulation of this 1963 PSA promoting the EPA. The clip features Batgirl coming to the rescue of Batman and Robin. Before saving them, Batgirl takes the opportunity to voice her concern for gender-based wage discrimination: “I've worked for you a long time, and I'm paid less than Robin! Same job, same employer means equal pay for men and women!”

Unfortunately, Batgirl would be disappointed that 49 years after the EPA, American women are still a far cry from achieving equal pay for equal work. The wage gap has narrowed (in 1963, women earned 59 cents to every dollar earned by a man. Today, women earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar) but the 18 cent shift over 49 years just isn’t enough.Batgirl would also be up to her Bat Utility Belt in  outrage to know that on June 5, the U.S. Senate failed to move forward the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), a bill intended to update the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Learn more about how the PFA would strengthen the EPA. Read more »

As the Paycheck Fairness Act headed to the floor for debate and a vote earlier this week, the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog questioned the validity of the figure most often referenced (and the figure we use at NWLC) – that the typical woman working full time, year round is paid just 77 cents to her male counterpart (the 23 cent gap). We produced this FAQ in response.

1. What is the wage gap figure?

   Our blog post from September explains all the details of how we calculate the wage gap – like how earnings are defined, which workers are included in our calculations, and which Census Bureau data we use – basically, we compare how much money the typical woman and the typical man make when they work full time, year round.

2. Why do we use this figure?

   Here at NWLC, we use the 77 cent figure because it captures the effects of many elements that produce the wage gap – including discrimination, caregiving responsibilities and occupational segregation – and demonstrates just how strongly they impact the economic security of women workers.

"The Trial Lawyer Paycheck Act," a piece that ran on the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal on Monday, is riddled with falsehoods about the Paycheck Fairness Act, which failed to garner the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster in the Senate on Tuesday. It's time to set the record straight.

1. False: The Wall Street Journal claimed that existing laws are adequate to address pay discrimination.

The Truth: Existing laws do not sufficiently protect women from wage discrimination. How do we know that's true? Because wage discrimination is still pervasive today, although it has been illegal since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963. The Lily Ledbetter Act, passed in 2009, keeps the courthouse doors from being slammed shut on women who are subject to wage discrimination by merely restoring the law about when employees can bring these claims to what it was prior to the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Ledbetter. The Paycheck Fairness Act is crucial to preventing that discrimination from occurring in the first place. It would strengthen the Equal Pay Act in critical ways by ensuring that women can find out whether they are being paid less than their male counterparts without putting their jobs at risk and giving women the tools they need to combat wage discrimination.

2. False: "To the extent there remains a male-female wage gap, it is mostly a function of occupational and lifestyle choices."

The Truth: Research has conclusively shown that after controlling for the other factors that might explain the difference in pay between men and women, time out of the workforce, job tenure, occupational choices, and the like, there is still a very significant wage gap that is entirely unexplained by any of these factors. Read more »

This morning the Senate took to the floor to debate the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), a bill that would give workers stronger tools to combat wage discrimination, bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary information, and ensure full compensation for victims of gender-based pay discrimination. This afternoon the PFA failed to garner the 60 votes needed to end debate in a 52-47 vote that stuck to party lines.

While I was watching the debate, numerous Senators spoke in support of the PFA. They spoke to the many issues that matter in this fight – the (obvious) reasons women should be paid fairly, how we can boost women’s economic security by passing the PFA, how fair pay for women is good for families, and more. Senator Durbin made a point that particularly resonated with me. He simply said: protection for women and their families used to be bipartisan.

This clearly should be a bipartisan issue. The fact of the matter is that the typical woman working full time, year round is still paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart, a figure that has barely budged over the last decade. Part of this 23 cent difference can be explained by occupations, work hours, and experience. But the truth of the matter is – much of the wage gap is entirely unaccounted for by these factors, and court cases show that discrimination continues to play a significant role in the wage gap. Read more »