Employers, take note: It's illegal to pay a woman less than a man if she is doing equal work. But if you think it will take her longer than half a year to notice the discrimination, give it a try ' you'll probably get away with it.
According to news reports, Republican senators last Wednesday blocked a vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have thwarted last year's Supreme Court decision regarding the time frame for pay discrimination lawsuits. Six Republicans (not enough to overcome the filibuster) joined in supporting the Ledbetter bill, which would have given employees two years to make the claim, instead of 180 days after the first decision regarding pay.
Those who opposed the bill argued that its passage would open the doors to an overwhelming number of lawsuits. President Bush said he would veto it, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, quoted in the Los Angeles Times and other stories, indicated his opposition, though he didn't go to Washington to vote. He summed up the position of many of the bill's opponents by saying, This kind of legislation G? opens us up for lawsuits
for all kinds of problems and difficulties in compliance.
Well G? yes. That's the idea. Because the number of lawsuits there might be is not the problem. The problem is the number of rightful lawsuits that cannot happen because of an unfair interpretation of the law.
As The Washington Post pointed out, before the court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the common interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was that an employee had 180 days after each unfair paycheck to complain ' each paycheck possibly being a discriminatory (and illegal) act.
News reports said Lilly Ledbetter began working at Goodyear in 1979 in Alabama, but didn't find out until her retirement that she had been paid as much as 40 percent less than the men who held the same position she did. Not only did she lose out on the differences in the paychecks, but the pay discrepancies affected her pension. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling that awarded her punitive damages and back pay ' she was too late.
The Ledbetter bill, which passed in the House last year, wouldn't even change the law to fit the pre-2007 interpretation. It merely would extend the time frame to two years after the initial pay decision. And Ledbetter would not have personally benefited.
Introducing the bill was arguably a political move by the Democrats, who knew about Bush's veto threat, to give them something to use in the presidential race. (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both returned to Washington to vote for the bill). I'm not really concerned about that, though. I'm mostly concerned with the fact that this is a divisive issue to begin with.
Anyone who can imagine themselves as a victim of pay discrimination can see the problems with the 180-day limit. In the first six months at a job, new employees are hesitant to make waves. Starting a job with a giant lawsuit would hardly help them make friends or get them noticed favorably by their superiors.
Female employees don't walk around during their first year asking their male colleagues how much they make in the hope of finding out if their wage or salary is lower. Ledbetter didn't find out about it until nearly 20 years after she was first hired. I doubt that she had decided to endure two decades of unfairly low pay just so she could get it all at once.
It's not a question of government interfering where it shouldn't, either. One could just as easily make the case that protecting businesses when they act illegally is not a part of our government's job. What is a part of its job is protecting workers from unfair practices.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, also quoted in news stories, said the bill was primarily designed to create a massive amount of litigation in our country. But those fighting for gender equality in the workplace are not doing so because they enjoy seeing courts flooded with lawsuits. That argument minimizes the importance of pay equity, undermines Ledbetter's goals and distracts from the real issue. Most significantly, it places convenience over justice.
Amanda Teuscher is a senior journalism and political science major. Send her an e-mail at at156604@ohiou.edu.
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