[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14597-14598]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, in just a few minutes we are going to have 
a procedural vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act. If we truly believe 
women and men are equal and should be paid equally, this ought to be an 
overwhelming vote.
  The Senate women held a press conference after the last vote. The 
Republicans gave the first procedural vote so we were able to get to 
this point, but now we have to have 60 votes in order to move forward 
with an actual vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act.
  We all know what this vote is about. It is very simple. It is about 
women in America having the same opportunity for success as their male 
counterparts. No one should be paid less just for being a woman.
  This issue was brought to us front and center by Lilly Ledbetter, who 
was a manager at a Goodyear tire plant in the South and who discovered 
just by happenstance that although there were five managers doing the 
same job--she and four men--she was getting considerably less money.
  To make a long story short, the courts were stacked against her. At 
the end of the day, Lilly Ledbetter was told by the Supreme Court that 
she was too late--she didn't know about this; it took her a long time 
to know about it--therefore she had no case. We fixed that problem, and 
we said: No more. We are not going to put a statute of limitations 
because someone may never find out about this unfair situation for many 
years and they shouldn't be disqualified from justice.
  But now we have more problems. We have testimony of people being 
harassed simply because they want to know whether they are getting paid 
fairly. I am so grateful to our colleague Senator Mikulski from 
Maryland for introducing the Paycheck Fairness Act which will help 
close the wage gap.
  We may say: Is there truly a wage gap? Yes, there is. Women get paid 
77 cents for every dollar made by a man for the same work. That is not 
every woman. But when we average it all, that is what she gets. In 
terms of a yearly pay, it is $11,000. I think we ought to look at this 
$11,000 less a year. What could we buy for $11,000? One year of 
groceries, in many places a year of rent, in many places a year of 
daycare or a used car or community college.
  What does this mean? It means that because the woman is not getting 
paid fairly, her family suffers, whether in the quality of housing or 
their food or the quality of daycare, the quality of their car, and 
certainly the ability of that woman to get an education and move up the 
scale.
  Looking at it from a yearly standpoint I think is important, but I 
asked my staff: Let's look at it over a lifetime and what is the loss 
to this woman and her family in a lifetime. Almost one-half million 
dollars--$443,000--in a woman's lifetime if she gets 77 cents instead 
of a full dollar. What could she do with that? She could pay off one or 
two mortgages for that, send three kids to the University of California 
or buy 8,000 tanks of gas. What we don't say here is you need more 
security, and economic security today, which is so critical. Thanks to 
science, we are living longer and we know it gets more expensive to 
live.
  If I were to tell one of my Republican friends on the other side that 
somebody came up to a woman, knocked her on the head and took half a 
million dollars from her and stole it, they would be horrified and they 
would remedy it. They would bring in the law. Well, I am asking them to 
simply vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act. Just vote for it. Make sure 
women in this country earn what they deserve to earn.
  The wage gap not only hurts our families, it hurts our economy. If 
you add it all up, it is $200 billion a year in income that would be 
spent at the grocery, that would be spent at the gas station, that 
would be spent on vacation, that would be spent on local restaurants or 
in better housing.
  In the history of our Nation we have had a lot of fights before over 
the issue of discrimination. We know you cannot discriminate on pay 
because of race, disability, or age. What we are saying is you 
shouldn't be able to discriminate based on your gender. It is wrong. I 
would say if it were reversed, I would be standing here fighting for 
the men. It is not right. People have to be paid based on the work they 
do, and if the work they do is similar to the work of a man, as in the 
case of Lilly Ledbetter, they should be paid the same.
  What the Mikulski legislation does is it prohibits employers from 
retaliating against an employee who shares information with their 
coworkers. Right now if you are around the cooler of your corporation 
and somebody says: Oh, my God, I cannot afford to get a babysitter for 
my child, I need a raise, and somebody says: Well, what do you make? 
And they say: I make X. Believe me, you can be fired for asking those 
questions. It is wrong. We have seen it happen. We want to make sure if 
there is a disparity in pay that it is warranted. Sure, if a woman is 
doing less than a man in a different job, of course that is not the 
same. We are saying if you do the same work, you have got to get paid 
the same.
  We have hundreds of personal stories from all over this great Nation 
from people who have faced pay discrimination. I have many of these 
stories from California. One of them is a woman from my State who had 
an identical advanced degree as her husband, and she landed the exact 
job as her husband, but they were at different worksites. Her husband 
was offered $5,000 more in starting salary for the same job with the 
exact same resume--same job, the woman gets paid $5,000 less.
  Then there is a health care worker in Long Island. She discovered she 
had been earning $10 an hour less than her colleagues with the exact 
experience. When she brought this up to her superiors, which you would 
expect her to do--you have got to fight for yourself. Don't we tell 
people that? Stand up, have respect, but ask the right questions. So 
she brought it up to her superiors. She was reprimanded. She was 
reprimanded and told not to discuss any type of wage gap.
  Then there is a female employee from a major corporation in Florida. 
She was told when she was hired that if she disclosed her salary to 
other workers, that was grounds for dismissal. So you have somebody who 
is well trained. She is great. Then you are talking to your friends in 
the workplace, you mention your salary. She was told in advance that 
this is grounds for dismissal.
  This bill is a major step in the right direction. I call on my 
Republican friends--we don't need many of you--five, is that right--
six, if everyone is here. We need a handful. Stand with women, stand 
with families, stand for children, stand for equality, stand for 
justice, stand for what is right. Don't play games with this. Don't 
take the side of a boss who is exerting all kinds of pressure on a 
woman to tamp down her salary. I think clearly if we do this together 
tonight--and I always remain hopeful--if we do this together tonight, 
what we are going to see is an America that is fair, an America that is 
just when it comes to our women.
  I am really glad one of our colleagues is here to discuss this from 
her perspective. You know, my kids would say to me, ``Mom, this is a 
no-brainer.''
  This is not complicated, equal pay for equal work. We stand for that 
as Democrats, and we are going to keep on fighting for it. Tonight is 
that moment in time when we will see whether our Republican friends 
stand with us to

[[Page 14598]]

give a fair shot to the women in this country--a fair shot--or they 
will block us as they have done before. I hope maybe they will see the 
light tonight. I don't think anything I have said will influence them, 
but I hope it might, because I do think it is in their interests as 
well as the interests of the women in this Nation to stand united with 
the Democrats on this: equal pay for equal work, fairness and justice 
to the women in this Nation. They deserve it.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the 
importance of closing the pay gap for women, and I thank my colleague 
from California, Senator Boxer, who has been working on this issue on 
the front line for so long as a leader on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay 
Act to help us get that done and as a leader again.
  I am a cosponsor on this bill and I urge my colleagues to join me in 
support of the Paycheck Fairness Act. People deserve a fair shot at the 
American dream. People deserve a fair working wage. That is why we need 
to raise the minimum wage. Equal work should get equal pay, and that is 
why we need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.
  I wish to thank the dean of the Senate women, Senator Barbara 
Mikulski, for leading this effort for equal pay for equal work in the 
passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and keeping the focus on 
the need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.
  In 2009, we passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to make sure that 
workers who face pay discrimination based on gender, race, age, 
disability, religion, or national origin have access to the courts. In 
doing so we restored the original intent of the Civil Rights Act and 
the Equal Pay Act. Now it is time to prevent that pay discrimination 
from happening in the first place.
  Women have made big strides in this economy. Women are getting 
advanced degrees. They are starting new businesses. They are leading 
major corporations. The Fortune 500 now has 24 women CEOs. Twenty-four 
out of five hundred there is still a lot of work to do, but that is so 
much better than where we were decades ago. Now we have a record 20 
women in the Senate. Yet despite the progress we have made and all the 
gaps we have closed, women still make less money than men do.
  The pay gap has real consequences for American families in our entire 
economy. Two-thirds of today's families rely on the mother's income 
entirely or in part, and in more than one-third of families the mother 
is the main breadwinner. But women only earn more than men in exactly 7 
of the 534 occupations listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That 
is only seven occupations, and I know there is disagreement about what 
the pay disparity is, if it is just based on other factors. But the 
truth is when you look at the list of the occupations, in only seven do 
women make more than men.
  As Senate Chair of the Joint Economic Committee, I released a report 
showing how this pay disparity affects women's financial security, 
because I think a lot of times people are very focused on the here and 
now, what that means the wage differential, and what that means in the 
workplace. This report shows that lower wages impact women all 
throughout their working lives, and these lower lifetime earnings 
translate into less security and retirement.
  You have the fact that women live longer but yet they have less money 
to begin with. Women live longer than men on average and are more 
likely to spend part of their retirement on their own because they live 
longer. So women actually need to have more money for their years in 
retirement. According to our report, the average annual income--this is 
average annual income for women aged 65 and older--is about $11,000 
less than it is for men. That is $11,000 less each year to buy 
groceries, to pay heating bills, to be able to see grandchildren.
  Lower lifetime earnings result in lower retirement benefits. 
Retirement security is often described as the three-legged stool--
Social Security, pension benefits, and personal savings. A woman's 
Social Security check is 78 percent of a man's check on average. Those 
are the facts. Again, it is about 80 percent of that of a man. The 
median income from company or union pension for women is 53 percent 
lower than for men. Finally, lower earnings also affect the ability of 
women to contribute to their own retirement plan. Women have less 
income to put aside and are less able to save money for their own 
retirement. They have smaller paychecks, they have smaller Social 
Security checks, smaller pension checks, and less savings in their 
retirement plans. They live longer and they worry all the time that 
they are going to outlive their savings. All this contributes to less 
retirement security.
  The pay gap is an especially large burden on women in the sandwich 
generation, juggling jobs, juggling their kids, and looking out for 
their aging parents at the same time. When two-thirds of the caregivers 
for aging parents are women, we need to make sure they have financial 
security.
  So make no mistake, the pay gap impacts women. But my point today is 
that it impacts women through the entire arc of their lives, and, if 
anything, it impacts older women who for now decades have been making 
less money in an even greater way than it impacts them when they are 
younger.
  Around 70 percent of our economy is consumer-based. If we don't have 
fair pay, if we don't have enough pay for middle-income families, then 
they are not going to buy things whether they are younger or older. 
That is yet another argument for not only having adequate minimum wages 
but also for addressing this pay gap. This legislation builds on the 
promises of the Equal Pay Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and 
gives women new tools and protections they need to guard against pay 
discrimination.
  I want to get this done, but I also want to work on the issue of 
long-term savings and how we can make it easier for women and men to 
save their money when they are working at jobs so they can help 
themselves. As we move forward, as we are living longer--which is 
great--we know it is going to get harder and harder.
  It was the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota who famously 
said, ``We all do better when we all do better.'' I still believe that 
is true, and so do my colleagues who have joined me today. We need to 
be focused on how we can help more women share in the economic dream 
because if we do, we will all be doing better.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Paycheck Fairness 
Act.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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