Equal Pay Day 2009
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act was the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law on January 29, 2009. Click here to view his speech and the signing of the Act.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 is Equal Pay Day.
Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reported in August 2008 that the ratio of the annual averages of women’s and men’s median annual earnings was 77.8 for full-time workers in 2007, up from 76.9 in 2006. While this 22.2% wage gap is the lowest ever, it needs to be a lot closer to zero. On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed his first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The bill allows women to receive the same remedies for sex-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subject to discrimination based on race and national origin.
Why is the Fair Pay Restoration Act named for Lilly Ledbetter?
Months before she was set to retire from Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Lilly Ledbetter received an anonymous tip that men doing the same job as her were making $4,286 to $5,236 per month while she was making $3,727 per month. Even though Ledbetter had received a Top Performance Award in 1996, Goodyear claimed that her low pay was due to her poor work. A jury initially awarded Ledbetter $3.3 million, but the amount was reduced to around $300,000. Subsequently, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that Ledbetter was not entitled to compensation because she filed her claim more than 180 days after receiving her first discriminatory paycheck. The new Paycheck Fairness Act not only widens the time period for filing a lawsuit, but also allows preemptive actions: it “amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require the EEOC to collect from employers pay information data regarding the sex, race, and national origin of employees for use in the enforcement of federal laws prohibiting pay discrimination.”
