Cardinals Tweets By Cindy Cardinal The Equal Pay Act was signed into law in 1963, over 50 years ago, but women still do not receive the same rate of pay as men for the work they do. In an updated effort to correct this issue, Congress discussed the Paycheck Fairness Act. A vote was recently blocked by Senate Republicans. The National Partnership for Women and Fami-lies found that Wisconsin women on average are paid 78 cents for every dollar paid to men. This amounts to a difference of over $10,000 in a year’s time. Even though President Obama apparently supports passage of this legislation, it was found that female White House Staff are only paid 88 cents for every dollar paid to their male counter-parts. It is argued that passage of the Paycheck Fair-ness Act would have helped narrow the gap. It would have made wages more transparent, re-quired employers to prove that wage differences were tied to legitimate business qualifications and not gender and prohibited companies from retaliat-ing against employees who raised concerns about gender-based wage discrimination. The bill was passed by the House of Representa-tives in 2009, but did not move forward in the Senate at that time. The bill was reintroduced in 2011, but did not make it to a vote. On April 9 of this year, a Republican filibuster again blocked a vote in the Senate. In a 2007 study prepared for the Department of Labor, Consad Research Group stated, “Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the difference in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices made by both male and female workers.” The study conducted for the Department of Labor might suggest that there is not a problem and that nothing needs to be done. But it also seems that sometimes the results of a study are the ones that the organization asking for the study wants to hear. Statistical data clearly demonstrates that women get paid less for doing the same job even though it doesn’t define the reasons why. It may also be true that women take breaks in their careers to raise a family, so they may not have the same seniority in a company that men have, or their experience might be limited. That still doesn’t mean that all things being equal, women shouldn’t get paid the same as men for doing the same work or having the same job description. I tend to think of myself as a conservative on many issues, but I can’t understand why the Senate would not even want to vote on such an important issue. Is it just about Republicans vs. Democrats? Or does it have something to do with the fact that most Senators are men? The Paycheck Fairness Act still makes the per-son who claims discrimination based on gender prove it. It isn’t automatic that just because a woman is paid less than a man that her employer will be charged with discrimination. But it seems that in the 21st century, with more women in the workforce than ever, that taking steps to even the playing ground would only be right. If you agree, I would encourage you to contact your Senators and encourage them to at least put the issue to a vote. They can’t vote on everything, but this one keeps coming back, so maybe they need to get serious about it.
Posted on: Wed, 07 May 2014 15:01:16 +0000
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