Equal Work, Unequal Pay
Imagine you’ve worked for a company for 20 years. You’re a good performer. But unbeknownst to you, the company puts workers over 50 on a lower salary track. At 60, you learn that for the past 10 years, you have been earning less - tens of thousands of dollars less - than colleagues doing exactly the same work.
Think you have grounds for a suit? Think again.
The Supreme Court on May 29 ruled 5-4 in Ledbetter (that’s me) v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. that workers don’t have the right to sue for pay discrimination if they don’t file a claim within 180 days after the decision is made to pay them less.
Now Congress has the opportunity to redress this injustice. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will right this wrong. And it will have a profound impact on the working lives, and livelihoods, of Americans across the country.
This effort to bolster workers’ right began in 1998 when I filed a sex discrimination suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I did so because I discovered that the Goodyear plant in Gadsen, Ala., had been paying me significantly less than it paid my male counterparts.
My salary started out comparable to the male supervisors, but over the years, unbeknownst to me, my raises were always smaller. Eventually, I learned I was earning $3,727 a month while the lowest paid of my male colleagues got $4,286 - for doing the same job.
An Alabama jury awarded me more than $3 million after finding that Goodyear had violated my rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But a federal trial judge cut that award to $360,000, then an appellate court reversed the jury’s decision and so I didn’t even get the $360,000.
Then, in the strangest cut of all, the Supreme Court narrowly interpreted Title VII, completely out of line with legal precedent and sided with Goodyear, arguing that I had filed the complaint too late since Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of “the alleged unlawful employment practice.”
The majority ruling apparently ignored the fact that Goodyear was still underpaying me when I filed the suit. Instead, calculating the time based on the date I received the first discriminatory paycheck, years in the past, it ruled that I had missed the deadline for redress.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Supreme Court’s only woman, took the unusual step of reading her opinion aloud. She noted that the original jury heard testimony that a supervisor who evaluated me in 1997 - an evaluation that led to denying me a pay raise - was “openly biased against women.” She wrote: “Toward the end of her career … the plant manager told Ledbetter that the “plant did not need women, that [women] didn’t help it, [and] caused problems.”
Substitute any category of work-er for “women” - seniors, Latinos, gays, disabled, Muslims, etc. - and you can see the impact that results from the court gutting this key civil rights protection.
While workers’ and civil rights groups are lauding the Ledbetter Act, the bill has met opposition from the pro-business lobby. Neal Mellon from the US Chamber of Commerce said that many business owners didn’t want to open themselves up to the liability of employees filing suits “decades later.” My story shows that filing these suits decades after the initial discriminatory paycheck is often unavoidable. Each paycheck I received was an act of discrimination, regardless of the amount of time that passed.
How many workers know what their colleagues make? Do you? I certainly didn’t until years after the fact. Indeed, one-third of private sector employers bar employees from discussing their wages with co-workers.
Unless Congress rights this wrong, employers can legally get away with discrimination so long as they can make it to day 181.
Lilly Ledbetter, a volunteer and mother of two, has been married for 51 years.
Don’t blame the Supreme Court, Lily. Blame the system that brings us a government full of politicians who are much too under-qualified for their office (including much too under-qualified to be appointing any Supreme Court justices.)
Using adequate campaign spending limits to get America better politicians is the only way to solve America’s problems enough. If you think “clean money” public financing of our campaigns will bring us enough campaign finance reform, you’re sadly mistaken.
we worked so hard and risked so much to make these gains in the workplace and the rest of the world only to be told by people who will never be subjected to these problems that we aren’t following the rules. (that would be the 7 white men on the supreme court. the black man on the supreme court does not use his past experience as a guide to reality.) with the current turning back of the clock, you need to worry about such things as your social security and your medicare when you get old. the rich people making the decisions may continue to decide that in this country we can have socialism only for the rich.
The author brings up a very important point regarding discussion/disclosure of salaries. If we the people would ignore their “ban” on discussing wages we could as a society begin to see that the wealthy are exploiting all of us.
In industries that commonly allow wage reporting, ie. sports, entertainment, CEO’s etc… salaries are vastly higher than those who cannot openly discuss and compare earnings in light of responsibility or productivity.
As usual, the sheeple refuse to risk a thing to take a stand and improve the quality of life for themselves. As long as we allow the exploitation it will continue and escalate.
People we have got to fight the elite within their own self proclaimed parameters. Your labor makes possible all the atrocities being carried out in your names. Shitty government and all of it’s actions. Usury laws, environmental protections( or lack thereof), poverty, no or shitty healthcare, and on and on.
Next time someome secretly asks you what you are making, tell them and find out the answer in their case. They can’t fire all of us. In fact, we’d be much better off if they did.
It’s way past time to take a stand against the status quo.
I think one reason why companies do this is to stifle solidarity amongst employees. They want the men and the women to resent one another so they won’t stick together.
Of course, the neocon will just tell you to work harder and negotiate a higher wage more aggressively. As if discrimination is brought upon oneself.
I’m really sorry to read this story about your situation…even more so because it appears the subsequent “corrections” to the justice originally delivered add insult to injury.
It seems pretty unfair and disingenuous to me that workers should have to respect a 180 day window of opportunity if employers can conceal with impunity whenever they make any employee salary changes. That 180 day window is complete nonsense if can’t be proven that an employee is even aware of when these offenses first take place. The only way a 180 window could possibly be fair would be under circumstances that would never happen, i.e. an employee outright telling an employee “We’re paying your coworker, who does the exact same job you do, more money because we like him better than you. What are you going to do about it?”
No wonder Harriet Miers thought she was qualified to be a Supreme Court justice.
I find the shamelessness with which so-called conservatives don’t even try to disguise their loyalties to moneyed interests absolutely disgusting. The only thing more depressing is the cynical parade both parties put on trying to convince me that my vote matters.
Once I applied for a job in Australia that had a US head office. I was told that one of the company rules was that no one was permitted to discuss their wages with any other staff member.
How could anyone know if they were being discriminated against if they risked the sack for asking?