[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5845-5846]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here this morning on a very 
serious and important subject--the Paycheck Fairness Act. I thank my 
colleagues who were with me earlier today at an event we attended. The 
President is doing an event right now. He has announced he will require 
all Federal contractors to follow the rule that there should be no 
retaliation against people in the workplace who share information about 
their pay. It sounds like a basic principle of fairness but, 
unfortunately, the law has gaps that permit discrimination--gender 
discrimination, unequal pay for the same work. So today on Equal Pay 
Day, I am here to advocate for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which will 
help fill some of those gaps.
  This issue is not a man's issue, it is not a woman's issue. It is a 
family issue. It is not about women, it is about paycheck fairness. So 
it is as much about men as it is about women. Right now 40 percent of 
all our families are supported by women either as the sole or primary 
breadwinner. That means the children in those families, and the men, 
depend on that income and on the fairness of their paychecks to keep a 
roof over their head and to keep food on the table.
  Paycheck fairness is about a fair shot--a fair shot for every woman 
and every person in American society. It is part of a larger agenda 
which includes raising the minimum wage, which we still have to do, and 
restoring unemployment insurance, which the Senate did yesterday but we 
still have to do in the House. That larger agenda about a fair shot 
goes to the core of the American conscience about what is right, but it 
also happens to be what is economically smart. Paying women equal to 
men for the same work means that women will come to jobs and they will

[[Page 5846]]

work better in those jobs, more productively. Women have so much to 
contribute in jobs where they serve equally or better than men.
  Unfortunately, the promise of the Equal Pay Act, signed in 1963 by 
President Kennedy, has yet to be achieved. That promise was that 
equality would prevail in the workplace. Yet 51 years later the 
disparities are glaring, the gaps between gender pay are unacceptable 
and inexcusable. Women make only 77 percent of every dollar earned by 
men. The disparity is even greater in certain professions. In the 
janitorial profession, among supervisors, and among CEOs, women make 70 
cents or less on the dollar. The same is true among financial advisers 
and among product inspectors. So the disparities cut across all 
professions. In fact, in 97 percent of all professions, women make less 
on average than men. That is why we must work to change the law.
  The Paycheck Fairness Act would accomplish a number of very simple 
straightforward goals. No. 1, it would enable workers to share 
information without fear of retaliation. Right now, a worker can be 
fired or demoted if he or she shares information about what they are 
making. The Lilly Ledbetter Act of 2009 advanced these goals and made 
some progress, but this threat of retaliation is real and completely 
unconscionable and it should be directly prohibited by law.
  Second, the burden should be on the employer to establish that pay 
disparities are business related or job specific. Those disparities 
ought to be the job of the employer to justify, not the employee. After 
all, it is not the employee who makes those decisions, it is the 
employer. So the employer ought to be the one to present a 
justification based on objective and real business-related or job-
specific factors.
  Finally, the Paycheck Fairness Act provides for punitive damages. 
Only by establishing punitive damages can the evil and harm done by pay 
discrimination be effectively deterred. The economic penalty will 
discourage employers by providing real consequences for their 
discrimination.
  This issue is really an American issue that has resonance coast to 
coast, job to job, and person to person, but mostly it has resonance 
among families. The estimates are that eliminating the gender pay gap 
will reduce poverty among families headed by single working mothers 
from 28.7 percent to 15 percent. It will reduce poverty, most 
importantly, among children. It will give those children a leg up that 
they lack now. It will give their moms a sense of justified dignity and 
self-respect. It will make a practical difference in the lives of 
families, raising the self-respect and dignity of men as well as women. 
If they are the beneficiaries of false factors, simple gender 
discrimination, how can they justify the additional pay that they as 
men make?
  Discovering and proving discrimination is a formidable, daunting, 
sometimes insurmountable challenge. Discovering it is difficult enough. 
That is why sharing of information is necessary. Proving it is 
sometimes virtually impossible without the kind of law the Paycheck 
Fairness Act will provide, the rights and making those rights real that 
can be achieved, ending systemic pay discrimination that undermines and 
disserves our entire society. It demeans all of us. It fails to give 
people a fair shot when that is the ethos, the core conscience of 
American economic profit. A fair shot is not only fair, it is smart. It 
will promote jobs and economic growth, which all of us deeply want and 
deserve.
  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.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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