Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 - Motion to Proceed - Resumed
Floor Speech
LILLY LEDBETTER FAIR PAY ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED--Resumed -- (Senate - April 23, 2008)
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day is the day that marks the extra months into the next year that a woman needs to work in order to receive pay equal to what a man would make for the equivalent job in only 12 months. Yes, Mr. President, as astonishing as it is, in the year 2008, it takes nearly 4 extra months for a woman to bring home the same amount of money as her male counterpart. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, women earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs. What a truly unthinkable, and frankly disgraceful, circumstance--one that we must do everything within our power to change.
And today we can take a small but very significant step to make sure that Americans have the legal opportunity to challenge pay discrimination by supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Before I begin, let me thank Senator KENNEDY for his efforts to ensure that we don't just stand by doing nothing, following an ill-advised Supreme Court ruling that takes us a step back in time by making it extraordinarily difficult for victims of pay discrimination to sue their employers.
This Congress must not stand by while the Court forces an unreasonable reading of the law. Through this decision, it tosses aside its own precedent and weakens protection provided by the Civil Rights Act to rule in favor of an employer that had underpaid a female employee for years. That is why I call on all of my colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, to stand together today to send a clear signal that pay discrimination is unacceptable and will not be tolerated by voting to move forward to debate the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
This legislation overturns the Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire. The Court held employees who are subjected to pay discrimination must bring a complaint within 6 months of the discriminatory compensation decision, meaning the day the employer decides to pay her less, and that each paycheck that is lower because of such discrimination does not restart the clock. Under this decision it doesn't matter if the discrimination is still ongoing today or if the worker initially had no way of knowing that others were being paid more for the same work just because of age, race, gender or disability. Most inexplicably, the majority insisted it did not matter that Goodyear was still paying her far less than her male counterparts when she filed her complaint. Mr. President, if you asked anyone on the street, they would tell you that this decision simply defies common sense. In fact, it is so clearly contrary to Americans' sense of right and wrong that everyone should be outraged.
Lilly Ledbetter, a loyal employee for 19 years, discovered she was being paid significantly less than the men in her same job. At first, her salary was in line with that of her male colleagues, but over time she got smaller raises creating a significant pay gap. How was she to know that this discrimination was happening? Hardworking Americans do not have the time to sit around talking about their salaries. It is clearly not her fault she didn't discover this inequity sooner.
In closing, it is disturbing that the Court chose to gut a key part of the Civil Rights Act that has protected hardworking Americans from pay discrimination for the past 40 years. It is our duty to send a message to employers that this type of discrimination is unacceptable. Fortunately, Congress can amend the law to undo this damaging decision. And, it should do so without delay.
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