As a practitioner of employment discrimination law this act, signed today by President Obama, is a huge thing so I had to blog about it.In the simplest of terms, the Lilly Ledbetter Act (aka Fair Pay Act) is like an amendment of the Equal Pay Act which stated that one gender, particularly women, cannot be paid less for the same job as the other gender. The Fair Pay Act turns over the Supreme Court case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber which stated that the time limit for pursuing a claim of pay discrimination begins on the date the allegedly discriminatory pay decision is made (time of hiring) and does not begin anew with each paycheck. Ms. Ledbetter had been working with Goodyear for 19 years before she received an anonymous letter explaining that she was making less than her male counterparts. Therefore, it was too late to bring a lawsuit, with there only being time limitation of 180 days from time of the pay decision to make a complaint.
In reality, who knows within 6 months of a new job what other coworkers are making? If we knew, there would be a lot more lawsuits/complaints. The Act changes the 180 day limitation from each new discriminatory pay check not from the first. It also covers race as well as sex.
I was listening to Barbra Miculski on the radio this morning discussing this act (she was one of the drafters of the act) and I am really hopeful that Acts like these will really start bridging the gap in pay. Miculski stated that black women make 67 cents to every white male dollar for the same job, black men make 72 cents, white women make 77 cents. With statistics like these one can only imagine that with the passing of this bill, lawsuits will be increasing.
And with that threat of lawsuit, employers will be very careful of how they make pay decisions and probably reevaluate some of the decisons they have already made (I smell raises for some people). If you're paying Billy 60,000 dollars to to practice law as a starting salary, you better give the same pay to Jessica or be able to document why.
Hurray for change!
7 comments:
Not too familiar with the bill but I am familiar with statistics so I guess what I'll ask you is this...what if this doesnt statistically change anything? Or even changes them in a negative way? At that point, would we say the program wasnt working or that the stats arent representative?
The idea is that it should change things and if it doesn't then there is more to the problem but the law will allow us to see that. If say, a black woman is getting paid less in her company for doing the same work as a white man and both have the same experience and edcuation there is a problem. But if we are seeing that the pay differences are supported because, for example, black women have less education than white men then we have acknowledged an educational issue that may have been hidden before.
This is a civil rights act for the most part and as a practitioner, I have yet to see the downside of insuring that everyone gets a fair try. You'll have to give me some examples of the negative impact or how this wouldn't work.
When I say change them in a negative way, I'm speaking specifically to the statistics, not to the principle of the bill. My example would be the instances were a woman might be getting paid more than her male counterpart for the same job so "correcting" that might have a negative impact on the statistic. Also, with different businesses and pay scales, we might no see any wholesale difference statistically.
So while the principle of fairness is itself sound, I'm not so sure that basing whether you're achieving that fairness, on statistics, is sound and b/c of that, I wonder if it can backfire. [Claims of unfair raises, possible layoffs, etc.]
I am surprised that this is just now getting passed.
To me it would seem like a no brainer.
From those statistics it looks like only white males where getting paid.
Hopefully, it will really bring about a change.
The thing is are they going to pay her what they are paying the white man or the black man?
Yeah! I want my money too!
Right after I get a job! Hell's yeah, gimme my money!
I was SO happy and relieved that this passed! Next up: equal pay for singles!
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