[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 5806]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                INTRODUCTION OF THE FAIR PAY ACT OF 2011

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 12, 2011

  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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