Anyone that has experienced discrimination in the workplace might at first wonder how it could be possible in our advanced country. They may ask, “Am I not equally protected by equality laws?” Which raises the first legitimate question regarding what laws do currently exist that will offer me or any woman equality opportunity in the workplace. As my research progressed, three laws stood out in what seemed to be the keys to equality. Namely: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Title VII states that, “it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” (Sec 703(a)78 Stat. 255, 1964) In order to enforce this law, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created as a vehicle for employees to take their discrimination cases to the courts for resolution and recompense. The title suffered fierce opposition from many parties at the time, yet prevailed and has offered women some ground to build on for equal treatment.
In addition to Title VII, we have the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The Equal Pay Act states that, “men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment are protected from sex-based wage discrimination,” while the Civil Rights Act states, “monetary damages are to be awarded in cases of intentional employment discrimination.” Taken at face value, these laws united seem reasonable and can blanket a broad range of discrimination. As Stetson says, “Law should be assessed according to whether it helps women overcome subordination to men…Men and women are entitled to identical treatment by the government. Anything else would condemn women to certain inferiority.” (WR, pg.21-22) With these laws to protect them, women have entered the workforce. But, are the laws good enough to offer women equal pay? Statistically, they unfortunately are not.
In 2007, women were paid only 77 cents for every dollar that a man is paid, which contributed to the working class losing $200 Billion of income annually due to the wage gape. (U.S. Census Bureau) This not only hurts women but also many of our working men that work in predominately female occupations an average of $6,259 loss each year. With 72% of our nation’s mothers working, the impact on the home is undeniable. For example, if married women were paid equally, their family’s poverty rates would drop from 2.1% to 0.8%. If our single working mothers were paid equally, their family’s poverty rates would drop from 25.3% to 12.6%. And if our upcoming mothers, our single women, were paid equally their poverty rates would drop from 6.3% to 1%.
According to my research, there are many beliefs as to why women work and what created the prevailing gender roles. Some say that women work to develop themselves as a part of society by developing their intellect and skills, while others say that women work our of economic necessity. Both are correct but irrelevant when considering their pay. Regardless of whatever reason a woman may give they should not be viewed as a reserve or substandard labor force that requires less income for equal labor. On the contrary, they require equal pay for equal work because it’s fair. For many it will directly impact their homes and it will reduce the nation’s poverty rates. For others it will help expand skills, interests, and intellectual property for those women. So the question now is how do we make public policy recognize all workers as the same?
One of the current cases that is raising awareness and challenging equal pay is Ledbetter v. Goodyear 2007. Lilly Ledbetter was hired in 1979 by Goodyear as a supervisor in Alabama. Towards the end of her employment she had a feeling that she was not being paid fairly, but there was no way to know being that pay levels was strictly confidential. After receiving an anonymous letter in the mail she discovered that as the only woman supervisor she was making $3727 per month, while her 15 male counterparts received $4,286 to $5,236 per month.
During the trial, Goodyear was found to have discriminated and ruled that she be awarded back pay and damages in the amount of three million dollars. Goodyear appealed the jury verdict and the case went to the Supreme Court. Their response was that since her pay gap was sequentially created through smaller raises over twenty years that Ledbetter should have complained every time her pay was less than the others. Therefore the Supreme Court reversed judgment of an award for back pay and damages, and instituted that pay discrimination must be filed within 180 days of the event. Many believe that their ruling was an impractical solution to a billion dollar problem in the United States. This is because the vast majority of employees who suffer pay discrimination don’t know about it for years, which would put them well past the six month window. Also, typically in order to generate a compelling case for the courts, there needs to be a successive record of pay loss. However, with the current ruling, if a pay discriminated employee doesn’t figure it out immediately, then, in the words of Lilly Ledbetter, “the company can treat you like a second place citizen for the rest of your career.”
Fundamentally, the ruling is unfair to the victims of pay discrimination, it ignores the realities of the workplace where salary information is protected in nine out of ten employers, and it doesn’t take into account the risk to the working class family if employment is terminated, under a made up reason but due to the possibility of an EEOC charge. So, in essence, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it harder for women to prove they are paid unequally, and the question remains as to why they did it.
Being that it is not clear as to why the five of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled as they did, I looked to those that supported the decision and found namely business groups that supported the ruling. Basically, they applaud the decision because it establishes a certainty for employers in clarifying their potential exposure to claims of pay discrimination, and protects employers from pay decisions made 20 years ago or more. Being that pay discrimination is a documented two hundred billion dollar problem, it could potentially have a notable economic impact if businesses were required to make repairs for pay discrimination that had lasted for many years. Perhaps the Supreme Courts ruling will become more clear, or fair for that matter, in the future since democrats have recently introduced legislation in Congress that would essentially overturn the Supreme Courts decision, the Fair Pay Act.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would provide that discriminatory acts occur by extension each time wages, benefits, or other compensation has been paid, not solely assigned to the first discriminatory paycheck but to any discriminatory paycheck received by an employee. If a company chose today to pay their female employees equal to their men, women would only have 180 days from their last discriminated paycheck to file with the EEOC. However, if an employer didn’t choose to pay them fairly today, the time would remain 180 days due to the continued discrimination. Obviously, there is an incentive for a business to evaluate their wages for fair pay under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
On July 31, 2007 the House passed the Fair Pay Act, but now it will require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome the filibuster, which they hope to consider the measure later this year, and a signature by the President. I believe Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it best at the Congressional Women’s Rally for Fair Pay when she said, “Equal pay is an issue of fundamental fairness. As families grapple with difficult economic times, it is also often about daily survival for millions of families, for those reasons, we must work together to bring the Paycheck Fairness Act to the floor for the vote it deserves…. We must take action to close the wage gap.” (For Immediate Release, 17 July 2008)
Equal pay could be the tip of a solution. Dorthy M. Stetson clarified in Women’s Rights in the USA, that “policy is in fact a process that involves continuing debate. Statutes enacted by legislatures and major court decision are usually important milestones in the evolution of the debate. Statutes and court decisions are readable and quotable. Although the process of implementing and interpreting them is more difficult to observe and delineate than are the documents themselves, both implementation and interpretation must be described in order to define women’s rights policy.” (pg. 17) How equal pay will be handled in the courts will reflect on how it will be handled in business groups; affecting not only equal pay, but organizational politics (which deny power to predominantly female jobs which reproduces male cultural advantages), harassment, and other discriminations in the workplace against women. More than just hoping for the best outcome, interested parties should petition their Senators and support those that are progressive in closing the wage gap.
To conclude the question on whether law offers equality in the workplace for women, there are laws in place but they’re not adequate. It will require further action and resolution in and out of the courts by those that are discriminated against. We may have to rely on our elected officials to generate laws that will ensure equal pay and equal opportunities, but we can also try to help ourselves by addressing in the courts any discrimination that has affected us in an EEOC claim. By defining better policies to cover equal-opportunity laws and enforcement, women will be more confident in and out of courts in assuring not only what is fair, but what is right.
Works Cited
Congresswoman Capps, Lois. “Congressional Women Rally for Fair Pay.”
For Immediate Release (2008) 17 July 2008
"It’s Time for Working Women to Earn Equal Pay." AFL-CIO. 2008. AFL-CIO America’s Union Movement Online
“Ledbetter v. Goodyear Equal Pay Hearing: Lilly Ledbetter.” 2007. Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives. 14 June 2007
Hoffman, Saul D., and Susan Averett. Women and the Economy: Family, Work, and Pay. The Addison-Wesley series in economics. Boston: Pearson Addison Wesley, 2005.
Stetson, Dorothy McBride. Women's Rights in the U.S.A.: Policy Debates and Gender Roles. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.
“Peaceful Revolution: Equal Pay for Equal Work – Time for the Senate to Vote.” 2008. The Huffington Post. 22 April 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment