[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 19, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S3894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             EQUAL PAY DAY

  Mr. CORZINE. Mr. President, I stand today to speak in support of an 
issue that affects every woman in this country--the fight for equal pay 
for men and women.
  Today is Equal Pay Day--the day when the wages paid to American women 
``catch up'' to the wages paid to men last year. So, essentially, women 
have to work almost four months more than men who do the same job just 
to bring home the same amount of income.
  Until the early 1960s, newspapers published separate want-ads for men 
and women. Some newspapers even printed the same job in the male and 
female listings, but with separate pay scales. Full-time working women 
would earn on average between 59-64 cents for every dollar their male 
counterparts earned doing the exact same job.
  Finally, in 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act making it illegal 
to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of 
gender. Since its passage, we have made significant progress in the 
fight for equal pay. Women now earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by 
a man in the same position.
  While we have improved over the last 40 years, however, we still have 
a long way to go. Apparently this Administration, however, thinks we 
can stop fighting for equal pay. The Department of Labor quietly 
eliminated its Equal Pay Matters Initiative, removed all information 
about narrowing the wage gap from its Web site, and refused to use 
available tools to identify violations of equal pay laws.
  Today, we teach our young girls that they can be anything they want 
to be, that no job or career is out of their reach. What we do not tell 
our young girls is that once they get that job and start their career, 
they will make 24 percent less than their fellow male coworker even if 
they do the same exact and work just as hard. And if they are women of 
color, they will make 34 percent less. If the U.S. Department of Labor 
thinks that this is acceptable, then we may as well tell those young 
girls to stop dreaming because their work will not be valued as much as 
their brother's will.
  I think we should continue to encourage women who are in the 
workforce and young girls who will be in the workforce that working 
hard will payoff. That is why I am proud to be a co-sponsor of two 
bills that will move this country toward equal pay for women--Senator 
Clinton's Paycheck Fairness Act and Senator Harkin's Fair Pay Act.
  The Paycheck Fairness Act will enforce equal pay laws for Federal 
contractors and prohibit employers from retaliating against employees 
who share salary information with their co-workers. This bill also 
addresses what is known as the ``negotiation gap.'' Women are eight 
times less likely to negotiate their starting salaries then men. In 
order to empower women to negotiate their salaries, the Paycheck 
Fairness Act creates a training program to help women strengthen their 
negotiation skills. Finally, the bill requires the Department of Labor 
to continue collecting and disseminating information about women 
workers.
  While the Paycheck Fairness Act addresses pay inequity among men and 
women for performing the same job, the Fair Pay Act addresses the 
problem of women not getting paid what they are worth for doing jobs 
that may be different than those performed by men, but are of equal 
value to the employer. The Fair Pay Act requires employers to provide 
equal pay for jobs that are comparable in skill, effort, responsibility 
and working conditions. The Fair Pay Act would apply to each company 
individually and would prohibit companies from reducing other 
employees' wages to achieve pay equity.
  This issue is not just one of equality among men and women--it is a 
bread-and-butter issue for working families. According to the National 
Women's Law Center, if working women earned the same as men, those who 
work the same number of hours; have the same education, age, and union 
status; and live in the same region of the country, their annual family 
incomes would rise by $4,000 and poverty rates would be cut in half. As 
we all know, family earnings determine where and how a family lives, 
the education of their children, the family's health care, their 
standard of living, including whether workers have a pension on which 
to retire comfortably. We're talking about serious consequences to this 
pervasive problem.

  Since the beginning of my tenure, I have been very involved with this 
issue. When the administration wanted to eliminate the Equal Pay 
Initiative within the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, I wrote a 
letter to President Bush expressing my outrage at the Department's 
actions. In addition, I was also a co-sponsor of the Civil Rights Act 
of 2004, which included the Paycheck Fairness Act.
  I commend my colleagues, Senator Clinton and Senator Harkin, for 
their commitment to the equal pay issue. I am proud to join them as co-
sponsors of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act. I believe 
that these two pieces of legislation will help put an end to the pay 
disparity between men and women and bring us closer to the year when we 
celebrate Equal Pay Day on January 1.

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