[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 769-773]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT

  Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the Senate floor to join my 
colleagues on the women's side of the Senate who will be coming to the 
floor this morning, along with Senator Mikulski--and I thank her for 
her leadership--to talk about pay equity and the issue of equal pay for 
equal work.
  I am proud to stand here on what is the 4-year anniversary of the 
historic Lilly Ledbetter legislation that we were able to pass. What an 
unbelievable moment that was, to work for what is equal treatment for 
women in our court system. Lilly Ledbetter went across the Nation and 
came to Congress and communicated very well to many Americans on this 
issue that sometimes you could be discriminated against and not even 
know it until your retirement, which was the case with her. Yet the 
legal system failed to take any action at that point. So we passed the 
Lilly Ledbetter legislation to make sure that in our court system women 
could find out and have those remedies brought before our system and 
fight for equal pay.
  My State of Washington has been a leader in increasing the minimum 
wage. We have a minimum wage that is indexed to inflation, and I am 
proud of that. But pay disparity continues to persist between men and 
women, and that is why I am here, to urge my colleagues to help close 
this gap. We are here to advocate for the Paycheck Fairness Act because 
full-time working women still earn 75 percent of what their male 
counterparts earn for the same job, according to a report by the 
Economic Opportunity Institute.
  While the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a step forward, we need to 
pass this additional legislation to help end pay inequity and take the 
next steps toward helping women. The Paycheck Fairness Act will help us 
move toward closing the gap between men and women, and it does the 
following things: It requires employers to provide justification other 
than gender for paying men higher wages than for women; it protects 
employees who share the same salary information from potential 
retaliation from their employers; and it provides victims of pay 
discrimination the same remedies available to victims of other kinds of 
discrimination, including punitive and compensatory damages.
  This bill also helps create outreach programs for employers to help 
them understand this issue and to help end pay disparity. I certainly 
look forward to the passing of this legislation because closing this 
gap means women in my State will be able to afford 13 more months of 
rent or 39 more months of family health insurance premiums, according 
to an estimate by the National Partnership for Women and Families.
  We have to level the playing field so these kinds of estimates are 
not just projections but they are realities. We can't support the 
status quo while the economic security of women and families is 
undermined. One-third of families headed by women in my State are in 
poverty. This can be attributed, in part, to policies that perpetuate 
lower pay for women. So we must end unequal pay practices and level the 
playing field.
  It is in this spirit of fair play that we ask for the passage of the 
Paycheck Fairness Act. I know Senator Mikulski and others who have 
fought hard on this legislation will be here to speak this morning, and 
I am proud we are sponsors of the Paycheck Fairness Act that was 
introduced just last week. Today, almost 50 years after passage of the 
Equal Pay Act and 4 years after the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair 
Pay Act, we still need to hit another giant milestone in helping women 
get fair pay in America.
  We made a big step toward all this with Lilly Ledbetter's leadership, 
but now we need to pass this new legislation. It was an important 
milestone that will help women be confident they will be treated fairly 
in the workplace and to make sure they continue to have access to the 
courts. Whether they are an engineer or a lawyer or a police officer, 
women should not have to earn less doing the same job as a coworker. 
That is why we need to pass this Paycheck Fairness Act today.
  I want women who grow up in the United States of America to know 
there is no doubt they will earn the same pay they deserve for their 
work. That is what our country is all about, and that is why we are 
going to work hard this session to pass this legislation.
  I thank the President pro tempore, I yield the floor, and I suggest 
the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I am so pleased to be joining 
colleagues in celebrating the anniversary of the passage of the Lilly 
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and to move on to what we need to do on full 
paycheck fairness with the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act.
  I wish to start by thanking our leader, the dean of the women in the 
Senate and the House, the longest serving woman, who is Senator Barbara 
Mikulski. She has led us through the Lilly Ledbetter legislation and is 
now leading us as we move forward to the next step in making sure women 
receive equal pay for equal work. Her extraordinary leadership is 
something that has touched every woman, every man, and every family in 
America. I wish to thank her for her leadership, as well as the efforts 
of all my colleagues.

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  It has been nearly 50 years since President Kennedy signed the Equal 
Pay Act into law--a law that made it illegal for an employer to pay 
women less than men for the same work. With the stroke of a pen, he 
ushered in a new era of opportunities for women and the American 
economy as a whole. In those 50 years, many millions of American women 
entered the workforce and we have truly changed the nature of 
employment in our country, including in the Senate, where we now have a 
woman sitting as the distinguished Acting President pro tempore, and we 
have 20 women who are a part of leading the country through the Senate, 
with 7 of us now chairing committees.
  I remember coming to the Senate in 2000, when it was the first time 
we had enough women to even sit on every committee in the Senate. 
Imagine that. It was the first time our experiences, our voices, our 
backgrounds, our values, and our priorities were represented on every 
committee. So we have come a long way since that time 50 years ago, but 
there is more to do.
  In 1963, women were often very limited in the jobs we could 
participate in. There were outrageous working conditions and 
limitations that made absolutely no sense. Today, nearly 40 percent of 
full-time managers in our country are women. I am proud to look around 
my great State and see two of the great universities in our country--
the University of Michigan and Michigan State University--both led by 
women presidents. We are seeing women moving up in every area. We have 
made great strides, but we also know pay for women continues to be 
unequal, even though we have seen strides being made. That is why the 
Paycheck Fairness Act is absolutely critical.
  This bill gives women tools to negotiate better pay and it stops 
employers from using workplace gag rules to prevent women from 
discovering their pay is actually less than the pay of the men working 
beside them. It strengthens the remedies women can use when they are 
discriminated against and ensures that discrimination based on sex is 
treated the same as any other kind of discrimination in the workplace.
  Four years ago this week, we passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act 
that overturned the Supreme Court's decision limiting the ability of 
women to get justice when they were discriminated against. At that 
time, Lilly Ledbetter did not know for a couple decades that she, in 
fact, was being paid less than the men she not only worked with but 
supervised. When she went to the Supreme Court, they said: You can't 
come before the Court. You have no standing because you should have 
done that 20 years ago. But 20 years earlier, she didn't know.
  We have fixed that loophole in the law, but now we need to go on and 
completely revamp and be focused on putting in place all the tools 
available to women to keep the promise of the law that was passed 50 
years ago, which is equal pay for equal work.
  In my State of Michigan, women are paid only 74 cents on every dollar 
that a man makes. Even though we have made strides, we are still at 74 
cents of what a man makes. And women are either participating as the 
sole breadwinner in their families now or part of a two-parent family 
trying to hold things together and make ends meet.
  It is not fair to the family that one of those who are working is 
only getting 74 cents on a dollar of what males in the workplace are 
getting. Over a lifetime, in Michigan that 26-cent difference equals 
over $\1/2\ million that women are losing because we don't really yet 
have equal pay for equal work in every part of our economy.
  When we look at this, it becomes very much about whether women are 
going to be able to pay their mortgage, their rent. When you walk into 
the store, the grocer doesn't say: You only have to pay 74 percent of 
the cost of this because you get paid less. The last time I looked, we 
pay the same for gas, food, rent, or the mortgage, and yet too many 
women find themselves disadvantaged because they are not being paid 
equally for their work. That is just not right. Everybody knows it is 
not right.
  The Lilly Ledbetter Act took an important step 4 years ago in 
overturning a situation that the courts I believe inaccurately, 
unfairly decided as relates to women. But the Paycheck Fairness Act 
gives women the tools they need legally to be able to remedy unequal 
pay situations and have the confidence that we are going to truly 
enforce equal pay for equal work in this country.
  Fifty years ago, Congress and the President came together and agreed 
that women should get equal pay for equal work. Right now, we need to 
reaffirm that. We need to make it real for all women in every part of 
our country who are working hard to make ends meet, to take care of 
their families, and to be able to move forward and realize their 
dreams. Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act is going to bring us closer 
to that reality.
  I again thank the senior Senator from Maryland for her incredible 
leadership in bringing us to this point with the Lilly Ledbetter Act 
and now taking the next step, which is to realize the dream of 50 years 
and longer in America, which is to fully benefit from the ideas, the 
strengths, and the talents of every individual and to make sure they 
are equally paid for what they are worth.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I rise to speak on the Paycheck 
Fairness Act. I would ask how much time is remaining.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. There is 17 minutes remaining.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I ask unanimous consent that we extend for another 15 
minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Madam President, I join with my colleagues you have 
already heard from--Senator Cantwell of Washington State, Senator 
Stabenow of Michigan--and today I know other Senators will be coming to 
the floor to say: We want to finish the job. We want to finish the job 
that started 50 years ago when Lyndon Johnson introduced the first of 
three civil rights bills that were designed to change America.
  In the mid-1960s, there was turmoil. Change was in the air. People 
wanted equality. They were marching on the streets, they were pounding 
on the tables, and they were organizing in civil disobedience. Dr. King 
marched on Washington and Lyndon Johnson was laying the groundwork for 
the famous Civil Rights Act that would open the doors for minorities. 
But the very first bill he introduced was to guarantee equal pay for 
equal work for women. He did that as the first bill because he thought 
that would be one of the easiest to pass.
  Well, 50 years later we are still being redlined, sidelined, pink-
slipped because we fight for equal pay for equal work. Every time we 
make an advance, they bring in the lawyers--the corporate lawyers--who 
then hide behind small business exemptions, and they fret on how it 
will wreck the economy of the United States.
  Well, I know what wrecked the economy of the United States, and it 
wasn't women wanting equal pay for equal work. That is not what brought 
us fraud, scams, and greed in the mortgage market. That did not cause 
the great collapse of the banks. We didn't cause that. Their hubris and 
greed did. But when they bring in the lawyers, we have to pass 
legislation.
  Four years ago, the first bill that we passed during the Obama 
administration was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It repaired the 
right of women to address pay inequality in the courts. What it did was 
correct a misinterpretation by the court on what is the statute of 
limitations when women seek redress.
  But let me tell you that the fight continues. The fight continues 
now. The reason we need the Paycheck Fairness Act is the fact that 
women continue to be discriminated against and economically harassed 
and punished if they even ask: How much do the guys get paid?
  So if you are standing at the water cooler or if you go to your human 
resources and say: What do I get--if

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Georgette asks: What do I get, and she wants to know what George gets, 
she could be punished. She could be fired. She could be penalized. She 
could be isolated for being too aggressive. Haven't we heard that? Too 
uppity--my God, daring to ask what George gets paid. Well, the Lillies, 
the Georgettes, and everybody who gets up every day and takes pride in 
their work, does the job they were hired to do, they want to get the 
pay they have every right to. So our legislation will keep employers 
from retaliating against employees who share information about pay.
  Remember how Lilly Ledbetter's bill got triggered? Lilly was working 
at Goodyear, doing a good job, even promoted. But guess what, finally 
some men, some great guys--and there are great guys--came and said: 
Guess what, Lilly. We get a better deal than you do. That is how Lilly 
Ledbetter found out, and when she went to ask, she was punished. So our 
Paycheck Fairness Act would keep employers from retaliating against 
employees who share information.
  It will also close a loophole in the current law that allows 
employers to use just about any reason for paying a woman less than a 
man by requiring that the reason be unrelated to sex and it has to be 
job related. The fact is that they will say: Well, we pay George more 
because you really should be 5-foot-8 to do the job, and most women 
might only be 5-foot-6. Well, have you seen those title IX gals lately? 
Anyway, they always invent the reasons. That is where, instead of 
solving the problem, they bring in the lawyers. They always bring in 
the lawyers. Now we are bringing in the votes, and what we want to say 
is that we want to close that loophole.
  We also want to improve the remedies available for victims of 
discrimination by simply putting the Equal Pay Act on par with other 
laws to combat equal treatment.
  Everyone wants to say what this bill is about. They all have 
opinions. It is not about politics; it is about a pay gap. It is not 
about only gender; it is about an agenda. What is our country? Are we 
going to be fair with each other in the marketplace? This bill is about 
our families, it is about our economy, it is about bread-and-butter 
decisions.
  So what are the consequences of paying equal pay for equal work? No. 
1, it will put more money in the family checkbook. More money in the 
family checkbook means more spending in the economy. It is actually 
good economic policy in the real economy. Now, it might result in lower 
executive compensation, but it will result in fair compensation to the 
women who work. As we know, women now are really a significant part of 
the workforce, and we should be paid equal pay for equal work and not 
harassed when we want to ask questions, and close the loopholes to make 
sure they don't make up phony excuses.
  This is very, very important. When we look at it, 50 years--50 
years--after Lyndon Johnson introduced his legislation, we are still at 
77 cents for every dollar a man makes. For women of color, it is even 
less, and for Hispanic women, it is only 60 percent. That is not 
enough.
  So we want to change the lawbooks so we can put more money in the 
family checkbook and more money in our economy and make sure that the 
dream of 50 years ago that was started by Lyndon Johnson we rectify in 
the passage of this legislation, which I hope we do expeditiously 
between now and Mother's Day.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from 
Maryland, who has been such a remarkable leader on all of these issues. 
We have so much work to do, as she has outlined, and I will add a few 
specific cases to what she said.
  This is the 4-year anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and we 
were able to push it forward, and it was the first bill President Obama 
signed in his first term. I think that said a lot about its importance.
  Because Lilly Ledbetter is pretty well known in the country, we know 
her story. You can imagine the feelings she had when she found out that 
after all the work she was putting in, simply because she was a woman 
she was getting paid less than the men doing the exact same thing. And, 
yes, thank you to the men who respected Lilly Ledbetter enough to let 
her know. There was a notice in her locker that essentially informed 
her that she was working for way less than they were. Over the course 
of her lifetime, it was a huge amount of money that made a huge 
difference.
  When Lilly tells the story, you can just see the anguish in her face. 
And she, of course, went all the way to the Supreme Court trying to get 
redress. Finally, the Court decided, and they said: You know what. You 
have a really good case, but you didn't move forward fast enough. You 
were supposed to come and file this lawsuit much sooner.
  Well, she didn't know much sooner. She couldn't have filed the 
lawsuit. And that is what led to our corrective legislation, so that in 
the future a woman who has faced pay discrimination will have her day 
in court and will have the time necessary to proceed with the court 
case and get justice. The court had said she had to file from the 
minute the discrimination started, but Lilly didn't know she was being 
discriminated against until years later. So thank goodness this 
Congress and the President remedied that.
  But we have unfinished business. We have a bill called the Paycheck 
Fairness Act, and I hope that all will get involved as well because the 
fact is that women, after all the progress we have made, earn 77 cents 
for every dollar earned by a man. We women in the Senate are fortunate 
in the sense that is one battle we don't have to wage because a Senator 
is a Senator is a Senator. Imagine if they had a rule saying men 
Senators get this and women Senators get that. People would say 
something is very wrong with this picture. But that is the way it is on 
the outside. It is undercover. People do not know about it, but women 
who do the same job as a man on average will make 23 cents less.
  You could say: Seventy-seven cents for every dollar--is that really a 
lot? Let me tell you, it is a lot. Over a lifetime it is about $434,000 
less that she will have at the end of her career.
  This pay gap persists across all occupation and income levels. A 
Bloomberg analysis found that women earned less than their male 
counterparts in 264 out of 265 major occupation categories. Women 
earned less than their male counterparts in virtually all of the 
occupation categories. So the wage gap clearly hurts women, but it also 
hurts their families. Think about families where the major wage earner 
is a woman. Those children and grandchildren will feel the pain.
  Of course the economy is hurt because there are fewer dollars 
circulating in the economy. A woman is going to spend a lot of the 
money she earns right out there, supporting her family, going to the 
store, organizing visits to camps and vacations, and all that money 
helps the economy.
  I am going to close this by reading a couple of stories, real-life 
stories. A woman from California had an identical advanced degree as 
her husband. She landed the exact same job as her husband but at a 
different worksite. The woman's husband was offered $5,000 more in 
starting salary for the same job with the exact same resume.
  A health care worker in Long Island discovered she had been earning 
$10 an hour less than her male colleagues with the same experience. 
When she brought this up to her superiors, she was reprimanded for 
asking about the wage gap.
  That goes to what Senator Mikulski said. Imagine the nerve of someone 
finding out they were paid $10 an hour less and trying to find out why, 
and for that she is reprimanded, put in her place.

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  Then a female employee for a major corporation in Florida was told 
when she was hired that if she disclosed her salary to other workers, 
that would be grounds for dismissal. She soon realized that her male 
counterparts made more than she did but she did not have any written 
proof. A fellow female employee at the company was told that because 
her husband picked her up from work in a nice car, she did not need to 
get a salary increase.
  We need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It closes loopholes that 
have allowed employers to avoid responsibility for discriminatory pay. 
It prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who share 
salary information with their coworkers, and it puts gender-based 
discrimination sanctions on equal footing with other forms of wage 
discrimination such as race, disability, or age, so women would be 
eligible for the same remedies available to other victims of 
discrimination, such as punitive damages.
  It is simply a matter of fairness. Every American deserves equal pay 
for equal work. We have to end this practice of shortchanging half of 
our country--more than half of the people are female. This means we are 
hurting our country, we are hurting their families.
  In 2010, Senate Republicans filibustered our efforts to proceed to 
this bill. All we wanted to do was proceed to it and get an up-or-down 
vote. We faced a filibuster. In June 2012, Senate Republicans blocked 
us again. We are calling on them in a spirit of fairness and justice to 
work with us in this Congress and give all the women of America the 
same chance for success as their male counterparts. Remember, $400,000-
plus over a career is a tremendous amount of money for people. That can 
make the difference in having a decent retirement. We heard today that 
the vast majority of Americans, if they lost their job, have no savings 
at all. It is not as if we are paying people lavish salaries. Let's 
make sure, whatever the salaries are, that they are fair, that they are 
equal to each other. If a woman is doing the same job, much as a 
Senator, as a male, they get the same pay. It is simple. It should not 
be a problem.
  If there is a filibuster, I will never understand it. I will say 
this. No woman in America today will understand why anyone would 
filibuster such a bill--equal pay for equal work. And no man in America 
who loves a woman, be it their mom or their aunt or their wife or their 
daughter, would understand it either. Let's hope we get to a vote on 
this measure.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. BEGICH. Madam President, I thank my colleague from California for 
making those important remarks. I am also here to talk about the 
Paycheck Fairness Act for a few minutes, if I could. As she said in her 
last remarks, it is very important to note the last few times this 
issue has come up it was filibustered. We did not even get to the bill. 
So hopefully, according to the new rules we agreed on here and 
coordinated in a bipartisan way, we will get to the bill and we will 
debate it on its merits, not on whether it should proceed. Let's see 
how that works. Again, I thank her for coming down here today.
  I rise here on the anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 
2009 to lend my support to the next bill we need to pass, the Paycheck 
Fairness Act. I thank Senator Mikulski for organizing this important 
discussion.
  Four years ago I entered this Chamber fresh from Alaska. Madam 
President, you are fresh from North Dakota. I probably sat right there 
during that debate in 2009. I was finishing my second term as mayor of 
Anchorage and was excited to take on the new challenges in the Senate 
on behalf of all Alaskans. I am honored to say one of my first votes in 
the Senate as a new Senator was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I was 
proud to add my support to the cause.
  At the same time it was--and is--disheartening to continue hearing 
about pay inequity as a major economic problem, that there are still 
drastic wage gaps for women, that women on average still earn about 
one-fifth less than their male counterparts.
  We all know the numbers. That is why I have cosponsored Senator 
Mikulski's Paycheck Fairness Act each time it was introduced. It 
provides women with the tools to close this long-standing gap. Her bill 
is an important companion to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which kept the 
courthouse door open to demand justice over pay discrimination.
  This was a crucial victory, but we must continue the fight and finish 
the job by passing paycheck fairness. At its core, the bill is really 
very simple: It says employees and employers can share wage information 
and that discrepancies in pay must be based on experience and 
qualifications--not on gender.
  What is more fair than that?
  Unfortunately, my State is not a leader on pay equity. In Alaska, 
women earn 78 cents for every dollar paid to men. Unless that changes, 
Alaska women will earn $623,000 less than men during their working 
careers. This pay gap has harmed the families of roughly 155,000 women 
in the Alaska workforce. Women in Alaska have higher rates of economic 
insecurity than men: In 2010, women working full time not only earned 
lower average wages but also were more likely to live in poverty--more 
than 10 percent of Alaska women compared to about 7 percent of men.
  Women in Alaska make up 47 percent of the state workforce and nearly 
half of them are married mothers who are the primary wage earners in 
their families. When they earn less than men, that burden falls on the 
entire family--including about 112,000 Alaska children who are 
dependent on their mother's earnings.
  The State's highest-paying industries--including manufacturing, 
natural resources and mining--are mostly dominated by men. Jobs such as 
miners, mobile heavy equipment mechanics and electrical power line 
installers pay much better than State average wages, but few women are 
getting those jobs.
  Our Alaska Department of Labor puts it bluntly: ``Women seem to be 
funneled into lower-pay occupations.''
  Listen to these numbers. If the gap between men's and women's wages 
in Alaska were eliminated, each full-time working woman could suddenly 
afford to pay for 2 more years of groceries, buy 3,700 more gallons of 
gas or pay the mortgage and utility bills for 8 more months.
  So on this 4th anniversary of the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair 
Pay Act, I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Let's 
finish the job and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. As I said, it's so 
simple. The bill will close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and 
establish stronger workplace protections for women.
  In the real world there should be nothing complicated or 
controversial about this, but sometimes we wonder where we are; it is 
not always the real world. As I said at the beginning of my comments, 
hopefully the issue of filibuster will not be part of this equation, 
that we actually get on the bill, have the debate, and people can vote 
up or vote down, amend it or not, and determine where we stand on this 
issue.
  I am from a household where we were raised by a mother, the six of 
us. My father died when I was 10. She survived raising four boys, which 
is a miracle in itself, and two girls. The problem was not the girls, 
it was the boys. But she raised six of us at a very young age. 
Hopefully some would consider us productive parts of society. But when 
I saw what my mom had to struggle through, what she had to earn to make 
sure we had food on the table, make sure we had opportunities in our 
lives, it is clear to me that this is not a complicated issue. This is 
a simple fairness issue.
  I hope my colleague on the other side, again, would allow it to come 
forward. We will debate it and then we will vote on it, and the 
American people, Alaskans, will see what we think of fairness in the 
sense of a paycheck for a woman working the same job--equal job as a 
man does.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Indiana.

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