[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 63 (Tuesday, April 28, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E999]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            ON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FAIR PAY ACT OF 2009

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                        of district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 28, 2009

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, the first bill that President Barack Obama 
signed was H.R. 11, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 to restore 
the Equal Pay Act (EPA) to its interpretation since it was enacted in 
1963. That bill could not wait until today, Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay 
Day marks the day nearly four months into a new year--that women must 
work to earn as much as men did last year. However, although the EPA 
was highly successful for close to 20 years, the EPA had grown so 
creaky with age that the Ledbetter Act could do no more than 
resuscitate the old EPA. However, it is long past the time to amend the 
EPA to meet the changed economy, where women work as much as men, and 
in today's troubled economy women are increasingly supporting husbands, 
sons and families. My House colleague Rosa DeLauro and I, and scores of 
other Members got the House to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and on 
Equal Pay Day, we urge the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. 
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and I have long pressed for the passage of 
the Paycheck Fairness Act and both of us testified at its first hearing 
before the Committee on Education and Labor during the 110th Congress. 
My own experience as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission (EEOC), when President Jimmy Carter moved the EPA and other 
civil rights statutes to the EEOC as parts of a historic 
reorganization, demonstrated to me both the strengths and the weakness 
of the EPA.
  As important as the Ledbetter Act, was it is only a gate opener to 
the EPA. The Paycheck Fairness Act, passed in the House this session is 
also an important update of the EPA's basic procedures, giving them 
``the same muscle'' as other anti-discrimination statutes, including 
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the age Discrimination in 
Employment Act, both of which I administered along with the Equal Pay 
Act. However, the Fair Pay Act (FPA) goes the next step, putting an end 
to wage discrimination against women and others by establishing equal 
pay for equal work. This bill recognizes that women earn significantly 
less than men for work, and amends the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
1938, known as the Equal Pay Act, to provide more effective remedies to 
victims of wage discrimination on the basis of sex. The Paycheck 
Fairness Act instructs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 
(EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to train 
EEOC employees and affected individuals and entities on matters 
involving wage discrimination and authorizes the Secretary of Labor to 
fund skills training programs for girls and women. The bill further 
directs the Secretary to provide studies, information, summits, 
guidelines, awards and assistance for employer evaluations of job 
categories based on objective criteria.
  Therefore, with Senator Tom Harkin, I am pleased again to introduce 
the FPA to pick up where the EPA leaves off, by bringing the EPA into 
the 21st century by taking on sex segregated jobs where gender 
influenced wages leave the average woman worker without any remedy.
  The FPA sends a message to the average woman worker, who is often 
steered to and then locked into a job with wages that are deeply 
influenced by the gender of those who have traditionally held those 
jobs. Women often are used inconsistent with their qualifications today 
because of employer steering, and because of deeply rooted wage 
stereotypes that result in pay according to gender and not according to 
the skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions necessary to 
do the job. We introduce the FPA because the pay problems of many women 
today stem from sex segregation between the jobs that women and men 
traditionally do. Two-thirds of white women, and three quarters of 
African American women, work in just three areas: sales and clerical, 
service, and factory jobs despite women's superior education to men for 
several decades. Only a combination of more aggressive strategies, 
including the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Fair Pay Act can break 
through the ancient societal habits present throughout human time the 
world over, as well as employers steering women into ``women's jobs'' 
which is as old as paid employment for women itself.
  The FPA recognizes that, if men and women are doing comparable work, 
they should be paid a comparable wage. For example, if a woman is an 
emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, why is she 
often paid considerably less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated 
profession? Is this because each of these jobs has been dominated by 
one sex? The Fair Pay Act does not decide this issue, but the bill does 
allow women to show that some or all of the wage disparity is gender 
based. The burden is on the female plaintiff, a difficult case to make 
in a market economy, but women deserve the right to carry that burden 
in appropriate cases.
  The FPA, no more than the EPA, tampers with our market system. As 
with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove 
discrimination. As with the EPA, she must show that the reason for the 
disparity is sex 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 the pay gap that is due to discrimination can be eliminated. 
Twenty states have adjusted wages for women 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% less than male jobs. There 
often will be some portion of the gap that is traceable to market 
conditions, but twenty states have shown that you can tackle the 
discrimination gap without interfering with the free market system. The 
states generally have closed the discrimination gap over a period of 
four or five years at a one-time cost no more than three to four 
percent of payroll.
  In addition, routinely, many women workers achieve pay equity through 
collective bargaining. In addition countless employers on their own, as 
they see women shifting out of vital female-dominated occupations, the 
effects of the shortage of workers in vital occupations, and the 
unfairness to women, are raising women's wages with pay equity 
adjustments. The best case for a strong and updated EPA with at least 
the Paycheck Fairness Act occurred here in the Congress in 2003, when 
women custodians in the House and Senate won an EPA case after showing 
that women workers were paid a dollar less for doing the same and 
similar work as men. Had they not been represented by their skillful 
and dedicated union, they would have had an almost impossible task 
using the rules for bringing and sustaining an EPA class action suit 
today. The FPA simply modernizes the EPA to make such a suit more 
possible by women acting alone.
  Start where we like, but Congress should be ashamed to let another 
year go by while working families lose more than $200 billion 
annually--more than $4,000 per family--even considering education, age 
and hours of works and location. Unequal pay has been built into the 
way women have been treated since shortly after Adam and Eve. To 
dislodge such deep seated and pervasive treatment, we must update old 
vehicles like the EPA with the Paycheck Fairness Act and create new 
laws, such as the Fair Pay Act I introduce today.

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