Support S. 1843, The Fair Pay Restoration Act (04-April-08)

Please urge your Senators to support S. 1843, The Fair Pay Restoration Act »

Do you know exactly how much your co-workers make? If you got a raise recently, do you know how it compares to your colleagues? Well, the Supreme Court seems to believe that you do. But if your employer is unfairly paying your co-workers more and you don’t find out soon enough, you may be deprived of wages to which you are entitled for the rest of your time at that job. And according to the Supreme Court, there is nothing you can do about it. Sound unfair? Read on. With your help, the Senate may soon do something to help.

On May 29, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that workers can’t sue for the continuing effects of past wage discrimination. Simply put, the Court held that employees who have suffered years of discrimination can’t have their day in court, if they don’t discover the discrimination soon after it started. In Lilly Ledbetter’s case, the Court said that she didn’t have a valid claim of wage discrimination because she had not filed her complaint within 180 days of Goodyear’s initial discriminatory pay decision. But Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know she was being paid less than her male coworkers within six months of her boss’ discriminatory pay decision. She only found out because someone slipped her an anonymous note years after the problem started. In her case, the unlawful pay disparities occurred in small amounts that built up slowly, but steadily over time. Goodyear unlawfully paid her less and pocketed the money.

For decades before this decision, it was a bedrock legal principle that workers unfairly paid less than their co-workers could have their day in court on the grounds that each individual paycheck was tainted with unlawful discrimination. The Ledbetter decision not only reversed years of employment law, it also ignored the realities of a workplace. Often employees don’t know what their co-workers are paid, much less learn that information within the first 180 days of a pay decision. Many companies even prohibit employees from discussing salary information. The Ledbetter decision allows a company to discriminate for years and unjustly profit from paying women, minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities less, as long as it keeps the discrimination secret for a few months.

Congress has the power to return to a common-sense rule. In an important victory, the U.S. House of Representatives took a vital step toward correcting the injustice created by Ledbetter. In July 2007, it passed legislation that will ensure employers don’t profit from years of discrimination simply because their employees were unaware of it. The bill addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability and clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence, but rather, that each discriminatory paycheck an employer issues represents an ongoing violation of the law.

Now a similar bill, the Fair Pay Restoration Act (S.1843), is before the Senate. It’s time for the Senate to correct this wrong and let American workers keep their hard-earned dollars. Please urge your Senators to support S. 1843, The Fair Pay Restoration Act »

Southwest Women’s Law Center Releases New Analysis of the Earnings Gap in New Mexico

In observance of Equal Pay Day, April 22, 2008, the Southwest Women’s Law Center released a report analyzing the earnings gap in New Mexico. The Center joined Lt. Governor Diane Denish, the Commission on the Status of Women and others at a press conference to release the findings. Click here for a copy of the report »