I was disheartened to hear Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin recently signed a law that repealed Wisconsin's Fair Pay Act. This commonsense piece of legislation, like the Lilly Ledbetter Act signed into law by President Obama in 2009, was designed to make it easier for victims of wage discrimination to pursue compensatory damages. The law was meant to deter employers from paying certain workers less for equal work, and to put us on a path toward pay equity in this country.
It's unfortunate that Governor Walker saw fit to roll back these protections.
The fact is, with the economy still in a fragile state, women need more economic security, not less. In Wisconsin, women make just 75 cents on the dollar for what men make, in New York, women make just 83 cents, and nationally that figure is 77 cents. If you're an African American woman, you are earning 62 cents on the dollar, and if you are a Latina, only 54 cents on that dollar. This is unacceptable.
But the issue of pay equity is not merely one of fairness. Equal pay for equal work is vital for our economic growth and middle class financial security. With more and more women contributing to household incomes, the lack of equal pay for women hurts all middle class working families -- men and children included. In New York alone, women head more than 1,000,000 households. It's estimated that because of the wage gap, New York families are deprived of $8,600 a year. Nationwide, it's been estimated that if women were paid a dollar on the dollar for equal work, the U.S. GDP could grow up to 9 percent.
In addition to being an economic security issue, the failure to pay women a salary that's equal to men for equal work is also a women's health issue. The fact is that the salary women are paid directly impacts the type of health care services they are able to access for both themselves and their families. For example, if we closed the wage gap, a working woman in New York would be able to afford more than two years worth of additional family health insurance premiums. At a time when women's health services are increasingly vulnerable to budget cuts, it's more important than ever that women have financial security to maintain access to basic care for them and their families.
Empowering women in the workforce is a key to growing the economy and having a thriving middle class.
To achieve this goal we must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which I'm proud to co-sponsor in the U.S. Senate. This bill would amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to offer more protections for women in the workforce. Since 1970, we've been able to steadily shrink the wage gap in this country, but in recent years that progress has stalled. We need Congress to act so we can unleash the full economic potential of women and get our economy back on track.
Today, April 17, is Equal Pay Day, the day in the year marking how much longer women would have to work to earn what men earned in 2011. Let's pledge to make sure that this day continues to move earlier and earlier in the year until women don't have to work even one day more than men to earn the same wage.
Follow Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SenGillibrand
An FSR helps clients open accounts, solve issues, etc. more than two years ago they starter having the FSRs fill in for the tellers during lunch and vacations and whenever they were needed . The FSRs goals were not reduced so the time away from their main position made it hard to reach their goals and get their commissions, if you did not reach your goal you got no commission at all.
When the program started her branch had both FSR position filled by women. Shortly thereafter the other women left and the position has since been filled by men, 3 in all.
Not one of these men have had do do the teller work since! So she has been the sole person to bear the extra work while her male counterparts get to work on building their commissions, which she has missed making a number of times.
Her boss is a woman as well as her bosses boss and they seem to be fine with it, they are certainly aware of it. I keep telling her to document this but she is very worried she will lose her job if she makes a stink.
It is sad her female bosses don't look out for their female subordinates but they are caught in the same system, follow the status quo or get craped on.
Seems males and females act the same once they have something to lose.
It's exactly what is happening...
That stopped being a respectable point of discussion decades ago.
I have never been paid anymore than any of my female coworkers doing the same job, in a couple of case less.
At the time, ID had a minimum wage the same as the federal level, and WA was about $3 more per hour. So in that situation YOU would expect Spokane to be a slum and Coeur d'Alene to be booming. And yet the exact opposite was true.
And the REASON for that is because wages only make up between 5% for services and 25% for goods, of the costs you pay. Which means that if we were to suddenly DOUBLE every single person's wages in the country, we'd see costs go up at MOST 35%, while WAGES would go up 100%, and demand would spike IMMEDIATELY!
What then?
And meanwhile, you don't even know (care), you just assume that men are all paid the same...
We have the same certifications and I even have a few years more experience.
started at more than my salary. Same company, department, same job title, same boss(male), same hours, same workload, same everything. Go figure.
Why has the GOP in state legislatures failed to ratify the 1972 Congressional ERA legislation? That is the dialogue worth encouraging.
Of course Ann Romney never worked a 9-5 job and she and her kids have wealth and privilege that separates them from the middle and low income working women in America. But the GOP doesn't get that concept. They just want wedge issues for 2012.
It's a situation only an employer could love. We let in staggering numbers of foreigners in both high and low income professionÂs under worker visas such as H-1B, L1, OPT, H-2B, etc. Of course these workers "coincidenÂtally" come in very high percentageÂs from the low wage countries such as India (forget higher wage Japan or Western Europe). Anyone think THAT'S an accident? Employers love it because the visa terms make it very difficult to switch employers. They have captive indentured workers for years to come.
And let's not forget the many overhead costs from immigratioÂn: education and health costs, language issues, use of govt services, population congestionÂ, terrorism, disease, etc. ImmigratioÂn has truly become a big loser for the entire country except employers!Â!
Men stick together. Rewarding other men for being men.
SURE, those corporations could make more money and profit by paying men less...but since when do corporations care about money or profit?
No...they want to help men maintain their dominance. That is their priority.
Now, granted, it MIGHT appear that those same corporations DO NOT care about those men when they ship their jobs overseas, leaving them jobless and poor. BUT...that's just those corporations caring about men in a different country.