DeLauro Celebrates Equal Pay Act's 50th Anniversary

Press Release

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) celebrated today's 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act with both local and national advocates for ending pay discrimination. DeLauro and Teresa Younger, Executive Director of the Connecticut Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, spoke in New Haven this afternoon. Allie Scheiffelin Walker, a former Wall Street executive, spoke about the pay discrimination she experienced at Morgan Stanley.

"Fifty years ago, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act to confront the "serious and endemic' problem of unequal wages. But the problem still persists, with women making only 77 cents on the dollar for the same work as men. That hurts both men and women, for when women bring home smaller paychecks than they have earned, their entire family has less money to support themselves.

"For this reason and more, we need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It gives real teeth to existing law and hold employers accountable for discriminatory practices. It has passed the House of Representatives twice, a majority of the Senate has voted to make it law and President Obama has said he would sign it. It took 18 years for the Equal Pay Act to pass after its first introduction and I first introduced Paycheck Fairness 16 years ago. We are on the threshold, and American families cannot afford to wait any longer."

Earlier in the afternoon DeLauro joined her colleague Donna Edwards (D-MD), fair pay champion Lilly Ledbetter and a coalition of women's advocates on a Google Hangout to talk about progress made over the last 50 years and the need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. And DeLauro kicked off the day by addressing participants at the Yale Women's Campaign School.

The Paycheck Fairness Act requires employers to show pay disparity is truly related to job-performance -- not gender. It prohibits employer retaliation for sharing salary information with coworkers; under current law employers can punish employees for sharing such information. It also strengthens remedies for pay discrimination by increasing compensation women can seek, allowing them to not only seek back pay, but also punitive damages for pay discrimination.

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