Introduction of the Fair Pay Act of 2011

Floor Speech

* Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA), the first of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960s, was successful for close to 20 years, but it is too creaky with age to be useful today. It is long past time to amend the EPA to reflect the new workforce in which women work almost as much as men. Every year, Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and I, along with scores of other Members of Congress, introduce the Paycheck Fairness Act, to amend the EPA to make its basic procedures equal to those used in other anti-discrimination statutes. I was an original co-sponsor of, and attended the signing ceremony at the White House for, the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which further strengthens the EPA by restoring its original interpretation. However, the Fair Pay Act of 2011 (FPA), which Senator Tom Harkin and I have introduced in prior sessions of Congress, picks up where the EPA and the Ledbetter Act leave off, by taking on workplace gender discrimination in which gender-influenced wages leave the average female worker without any remedy. I have long pressed for passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the FPA, based on my own experience as the first female chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), when President Jimmy Carter moved the EPA and other civil rights statutes under the EEOC' s jurisdiction, as part of a historic reorganization.

* Along with my indispensable Senate partner, Tom Harkin, I again introduce the FPA on behalf of the average female worker, who is often first steered to, and then locked into, jobs with wages that are deeply influenced by the gender of those who have traditionally held such jobs. Much of the wage inequality women experience today is because of employer-steering and because of deeply rooted wage stereotypes, which result in wages being paid by gender and not according to the skills and efforts necessary to do the job. I introduce the FPA because the pay problems today of most women stem mainly from the segregating of women and men in different jobs. Two-thirds of white women and three quarters of African-American women work in just three areas: sales/clerical, service, and factories. We need more aggressive strategies to break through the societal habits present throughout history, the world over, as well as employer-steering of jobs based on gender, which is as old as paid employment itself.

* The FPA requires that, if men and women are doing comparable work, they be paid comparable wages. If a woman is an emergency services operator, for example, a female-dominated profession, she should be paid no less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one sex. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, she should earn no less than a probation officer, a traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with each of these jobs.

* The FPA, like the EPA, will not tamper with the market system. As with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. The plaintiff must show that the reason for the disparate treatment is gender discrimination, not legitimate market factors. Corrections to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical or unprecedented. State employees in almost half of the state governments, in red and blue states alike, have already demonstrated that you can eliminate the part of the pay gap that is due to discrimination. Twenty states have adjusted wages for female state employees, raising pay for teachers, nurses, clerical workers, librarians, and other female-dominated jobs that paid less than men with comparable jobs. Minnesota, for example, implemented a pay equity plan when they found that similarly skilled female jobs paid 20 percent less than male jobs. There may be some portion of a gender wage gap that is traceable to market conditions, but twenty states have shown that you can tackle the gender discrimination-based gap without interfering with the market system. The states generally have closed the discrimination gap over a period of four or five years at a one-time cost of no more than three to four percent of payroll.

* In addition, many female workers routinely achieve pay equity through collective bargaining, and countless employers provide it on their own as they see women shifting out of vital female-dominated occupations, as a result of the shortage of skilled workers, as well as the unfairness to women. Unequal pay has been built into the way women have been treated since Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep-seated and pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the traditional female occupations, where pay is linked with gender and always has been.

* The best case for a strong and updated EPA, with at least the Paycheck Fairness Act, occurred here in the Congress in 2003, when female custodians in the House and Senate won an EPA case after showing that female workers were paid a dollar less for doing the same or similar work as men. Had these women not been represented by their union, they would have had an almost impossible task of using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA class action suit. The FPA simply modernizes the EPA to bring it in line with subsequent civil rights statutes. From my tenure as EEOC chair, I know all too well the several ways that this historic legislation needs a 21st century makeover.

* Let us start with the Paycheck Fairness Act so we can be prepared to go further with the FPA we introduce today. Let us start now to make the pay worthy of the American women we have asked to go to work.

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