[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 6606]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             EQUAL PAY DAY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 22, 2008

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, today, on Equal Pay 
Day, Americans are reminded of how far we have to go in order to 
eliminate pay inequity between men and women in the United States. 
While our Nation has made many strides in the fight against 
discrimination, the struggle for equal pay for equal work continues. On 
this day, we remind ourselves that much more work needs to be done.
  Women have seen recent success shattering a number of glass ceilings 
within the ranks of corporate and government leadership. Yet the fact 
is that American women are still only being paid 77 cents for every 
dollar that their male counterparts earn with the same education, 
training, and experience. Any wage gap based on sex is unacceptable. 
The current one is staggering. As pay equity advocate Evelyn Murphy has 
calculated, the current wage gap means a woman with a high school 
education will lose $700,000 over her lifetime. A woman with a college 
education will lose $1.2 million over her lifetime. And a woman with a 
professional degree will lose $2 million over her lifetime.
  But unequal pay not only surfaces in workers' weekly paychecks, it 
also harms workers' retirement and health care security. Its sheer 
irrationality hinders the American economy as a whole. In the new 
global economy, those who stand in the way of equal pay are tying one 
hand behind America's back. Holding women back not only hurts workers, 
it's bad for business.
  And even where progress is made on the most insidious forms of 
intentional discrimination, reactionaries are still trying to roll back 
these protections. Just last year, the Supreme Court did precisely that 
in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear. Lilly Ledbetter worked for nearly 
two decades at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Alabama. 
She sued the company soon after learning that she was paid less than 
her male counterparts. A jury found that her employer had unlawfully 
discriminated against her on the basis of sex.
  But, five members of the United States Supreme Court rejected 
longstanding law and said that Lilly Ledbetter did not file a complaint 
quickly enough, nullifying the jury's verdict. In fact, Ms. Ledbetter 
filed her complaint as soon as she learned of the pay discrepancy 
through an anonymous note in her mailbox.
  However, the Supreme Court ruled that the clock on filing started to 
run when the employer made its discriminatory pay decisions, decisions 
which the employer effectively hid by explicitly forbidding anyone to 
discuss their pay. So despite finding that Ms. Ledbetter was unlawfully 
paid less than her male counterparts, she could not recover anything. 
The company that paid her less just because she was a woman owed her 
nothing. A slim majority of the Supreme Court shunned reason in order 
to satisfy its own narrow ideological agenda.
  I am proud to say that just months after the ruling the House of 
Representatives repudiated the Supreme Court's decision by passing the 
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would restore workers' right to 
challenge discriminatory paychecks.
  Today should serve as a call to action to end the pay inequity that 
half of our country's workforce continues to endure. The Senate should 
pass and the President should sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. 
And the Congress should take up additional legislation to strengthen 
the Equal Pay Act.
  I urge my colleagues to recommit themselves to the fight for equal 
pay. The wage gap between men and women must disappear. And the 
Congress has a very clear role to play in that effort.

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