Monday, June 02, 2008
Fix an injustice
From the RoundTable blog
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Lilly Ledbetter
Ledbetter was the plaintiff in Supreme Court pay discrimination case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
The Supreme Court denied me justice a year ago, but Congress has the chance to make sure that hard-working Virginians who are doing the same work as their colleagues -- all things being equal -- have the right to paychecks that are the same.
There are complex reasons why, nationally, women continue to earn only 77 percent of what men earn. Here in Virginia, on average, women working full time, year-round earn only 77 percent of what men working full time, year-round earned, and for women of color, the numbers are even worse: 59 percent for black women and 58 percent for Hispanic women. But the bad old days when pay inequity was accepted practice because a worker was a woman, a minority or possessed some other characteristic irrelevant to the job was outlawed with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids workplace discrimination.
I believed that pay discrimination was a thing of the past -- until I was about to retire from Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in Gadsden, Ala. That's when an anonymous tip informed me that for nearly 20 years, I'd been earning less as a supervisor than my male counterparts. My salary started out comparable to the men's, and I got pay raises along with them. But, unknown to me, these raises were always less -- at least 20 percent less than my lowest-paid male colleague -- for doing the same job.
Unfair? You bet. So I sued and a jury awarded me more than $3 million in damages, recognizing that Goodyear's conduct was outrageous.
Goodyear appealed. The company didn't dispute that it had lightened my paycheck compared to my male counterparts for nearly 20 years, but claimed that I hadn't filed within 180 days of that very first discriminatory paycheck -- almost 20 years earlier. The appeals court agreed, and took away my jury award.
In other words, my failure to challenge that first discrimination -- even though I didn't know about it -- meant that Goodyear was free to pay me less for the rest of my career.
You don't need to be King Solomon to see that this doesn't make sense. Do you know what your fellow workers are making? Some companies actually forbid employees to discuss their pay.
So I appealed to the Supreme Court. But in a stunning move, and counter to previous rulings related to Title VII, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, sided with the company.
It must have shocked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's only woman, as well because she took the unusual step of reading her dissenting opinion aloud, calling on Congress to overturn the majority's "parsimonious reading" of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace.
And Congress set about to do just that with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, which would reinstate the principle that each discriminatory paycheck is a discriminatory act that resets the 180-day statute of limitations, thereby re-establishing the incentive for employers to evaluate and correct discriminatory pay decisions.
The House passed the bill.
The Senate came close, with 57 senators voting to move forward with the bill. But because a determined minority has made it impossible for bills to move forward unless they have 60 votes, we fell three votes short of what was needed to begin debate.
This is not the end. The Senate plans to take up the bill again, and we need to do everything we can to make sure it passes.
Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia understands the importance of fixing the law so that ordinary workers don't lose out when they're discriminated against in their paychecks because he voted to consider the bill. Apparently, Sen. John Warner, on the verge of retirement himself, doesn't understand that pay inequity affects what ordinary Virginians get when they retire.
I should know. I'm 70 and retired now. My pension and my Social Security are based on the amount I earned while working at Goodyear, so this has been a drastic loss for me.
But this isn't about just me anymore. This isn't just about women, either.
This is about fairness.
This is about hard-working Virginians, working men and women, seniors, minorities and others, who depend on a fair and equitable paycheck for their labor.
The issue isn't going away. The Senate is scheduled to take up this bill again. Make sure your senator votes the right way.
Your paycheck -- and your retirement -- depend on it.
