Paycheck Fairness Act

"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 »

Yesterday, Senator Heller of Nevada introduced the End Pay Discrimination Through Information Act. Speaking on the Senate floor he said, "No one in this body should be so naïve as to think that pay discrimination has been eliminated." At NWLC, we couldn't agree more. But that's where our agreement with Senator Heller ends. The PFA contains commonsense provisions to help put a stop to wage discrimination, including negotiation training for employees, assistance to employers on coming into compliance with the law, awards for those employers who are at the forefront of fair pay practices, and research, public education and outreach to solve this persistent problem. In addition, it closes giant loopholes in the defenses available to employers that have threatened to swallow the prohibition on wage discrimination whole, and provides for the same damages in sex-based wage discrimination cases that are available to employees in race and national origin cases. It also ensures that employees can talk about their wages without putting their jobs at risk, so that they know when discrimination has occurred. 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 »

Mad about the vote?

Help spread the word about equal pay for women.

Just moments ago, the Paycheck Fairness Act failed to get the 60 votes needed to move forward in the Senate. Fifty-two Senators voted to allow it to proceed, while 47 opposed it.

For the thousands of you who sent emails, made calls and met with your Members of Congress on this very important bill, this is a huge disappointment. We thank you for standing with us, and we urge you to continue the fight.

In the wake of a disappointing vote, help us get the message out about the importance of equal pay for women by sharing this video:

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During today’s Senate floor debate about the Paycheck Fairness Act Senator Heller (R – NV) called the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) a “trial lawyers’ bailout.” Yet Senator Heller acknowledged the persistence of the wage gap, saying “no one in this body should be so naïve as to say pay discrimination has been eliminated.”

After describing the working women in his life and claiming to be their committed advocate against pay discrimination, Senator Heller went on to say that the Equal Pay Act is sufficient to fight the wage gap. If that is true, why has the wage gap only narrowed by 18 cents since the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963? Read more »

Yo, how hysterical is the Internet?  Have you seen the photo with the “Brick” iPhone case?

One of the reasons those memes are so funny is because they often depict people from another time - a period in history so many of us are familiar with only through a series of distant  images and associations drawn from movies, attic magazines, older relatives and our favorite substitute teachers. But THEN memes show these historical figures saying things exactly the way we would today!  LOL!  The Internet is so crazy!  It’s too much!

Except when it’s not.  In the case of fair pay, the irony is unfortunately too real.  Many of us think of sex discrimination as something that happened in the old days when women wore watches and talked on phones with cords, (Ok, ok, yes, we still do that today and maybe that woman is not actually from the ‘80s, but with fashions coming back these days, it’s hard to tell, and you get the point.).  Yet it’s still happening today, even in the age of iPhones and Blackberrys. Read more »

We all have one. And some of us have more than one. That distant family member, who you only see at weddings and funerals. That sort of a friend-of-a-friend from college, who you don’t really remember, but he must be ok because you have friends in common. Or that old neighbor who you used to babysit for and help shovel snow.

So when the friend request pops up on your computer, you don’t feel like you have much of a choice. Saying no makes you feel like one of the jerky kids on Forrest Gump that deny Forest a seat on the bus. So instead of saying “taken” you take the plunge and say “accepted.” Who doesn’t want more “friends?”

But now you have a problem. That “friend” of yours sees all of your posts and you see all of theirs. So one day as you are just shooting the breeze checking out random pictures of babies and puppies, you come across posts that deny that the wage gap for women exists. Every progressive bone in your feminist body wants you to respond. But what if you don’t say the right thing? To provide some good solid back-up, here is a list of what the “haters” have been saying and how you can respond:

• What the haters say: The wage gap doesn’t exist. The 77 cents number is wrong.

• How you can respond: It is a fact that fact that the typical woman’s earnings—when she works full time, year round—are just 77 percent of her male counterpart’s earnings (i.e., the 23-cent wage gap). This number comes from calculations based on the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey data. This wage gap results from several factors including systemic discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, occupational segregation, and workplace discrimination. Court cases continue to demonstrate that wage discrimination persists. The wage gap persists in nearly every occupation and research shows that even controlling for factors such as education, hours on spent the job, and time taken off work for caregiving responsibilities, a significant portion of the wage gap is unexplained. It is critical to address the factors that contribute to the wage gap and women’s overall economic insecurity.

For nearly 50 years, federal law has banned the payment of unequal wages to women and men who perform the same job. Yet women today still make only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts – an improvement of only 18 cents over the last several decades. And for women of color, the gap is even larger.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen current laws against wage discrimination by protecting employees who voluntarily share pay information with colleagues from retaliation, fully compensating victims of sex-based pay discrimination, and holding employers more accountable under the Equal Pay Act. These proposals would finally move the ball forward on the wage gap that has inched along over the last 50 years and remained stagnant over the last decade.

In recent weeks, opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act have put forth rhetoric that downplays the wage gap and mischaracterizes the commonsense proposals in the bill. To restore some reality to the debate, I’ve unpacked five absurd myths that have emerged as the Senate prepares to consider the Paycheck Fairness Act next week. Read more »

To flip an old phrase, the political is personal. And as a young woman in the beginning of my professional life, the Paycheck Fairness Act is very personal.

For those of you who don’t know, the Paycheck Fairness Act is a bill that would strengthen the Equal Pay Act by prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees for sharing information about their wages, improving data collection and enforcement by government agencies, closing loopholes that courts have opened in the law, and making it easier for employees to come together as a group to challenge discriminatory pay policies.

Apologies if that sounds wonky, but I promise you, these policy changes can have personal impact. Check out the wage gap in your home state (I hope you’ve had the chance to look at our beautiful state by state fact sheets on the wage gap). These female cents on the male dollar figures - 77 cents nationally, 76 cents in my home state of Illinois, 91 cents in Washington, DC - aren’t just arbitrary numbers. They translate into real money that never finds its way into your bank account simply because of your gender.

Did you know that a typical woman loses out on $431,000 in earnings over a forty-year period? That’s less money to pay back student loans, buy a house or car, send children to college, save for retirement, go on vacation, contribute to charity, or simply buy Ben and Jerry’s when it’s not on sale! Read more »

When I heard Alex Castellanos on “Meet the Press” contend that the wage gap is a myth a few weeks back, I choked on my green tea.

Data show that it persists across nearly all demographics and sectors of society. And equal pay for equal work seems like a non-partisan issue of fairness to me. But Castellanos wants to wave a wand and make those facts disappear.

Compared to my friends graduating this year, I feel pretty lucky that I have another two years before I enter the full-time job market. Bleak statistics on job placement for recent grads has me anxious about my future. Top that off with my soon-to-increase student loan rate (you’re welcome millionaires, enjoy your continued tax breaks) and my hope to continue my education beyond undergrad and my financial security is, well, nonexistent. Oh, and since I’m a woman, my new degree is very likely to earn me less than my male peers with the same degree starting year one, even though I’ve done everything right. Trust me, if I had a magic wand, I’d make the wage gap a thing of the past – but I don’t, and I’m worried. Read more »