Archive for the 'Workplace Fairness' Category

Today of All Days, Be Heard!

Published on August 26, 2010 in Debra Ness and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments

Debra Ness, President

Today is Women’s Equality Day, when we celebrate the fact that, 90 years ago, a group of dedicated women and men made history when the 19th Amendment passed, guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote.

We celebrate their legacy by continuing the fight for women’s equality – and we need your help. Add your voice to our latest campaign for equal pay for equal work:  We are gathering signatures for a special petition calling on Senators to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Looking back, it is hard to believe how hard the fight for women’s suffrage was. Those who opposed women voting — like President Grover Cleveland, who observed that “sensible and responsible women do not want to vote”– were out of step with the march of time.  We can only hope that 90 years from now, we feel the same way about those who are standing in the way of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help women exercise their rights to equal pay on the job.

The sad truth is, women working full time are still paid only 77 cents to a man’s dollar.  For African American and Hispanic women the numbers are even worse: 62 cents and 52 cents, respectively, for every dollar paid to a full time working white man.  This is tough news for American households, because in six out of ten families, women are the primary or co-breadwinner. Every time a woman is shortchanged, the whole family suffers, particularly in today’s economy.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would help to close that wage gap. The House has already passed the bill, and it has the full support from the White House.  But the Senate hasn’t voted yet.  It’s time to change that.  The Paycheck Fairness Act would help women get equal pay for equal work by:

  • making it harder for employers to hide pay discrimination;
  • helping train women and girls about salary negotiations;
  • supporting government collection of critical wage data; and
  • rewarding employers that have good pay practices.

It’s time to remind Senators how important women’s earning are, and that we’re counting on them to help us continue the progress.

So today, in honor of the suffragists who gave us a voice, let’s speak out and be heard!

Tell your Senators that you expect them to get on the right side of history and vote for the Paycheck Fairness Act.

And if you need to brush up on your 19th Amendment history, click here for the School House Rock version.

What you shouldn’t have to expect when you’re expecting

Published on July 23, 2010 in Portia Wu, Work & Family and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Portia Wu, Vice President

Portia Wu, Vice President

Owning your own home has long been a central part of the American Dream.  It’s as American as baseball, apple pie and mom.  But according to this column in the New York Times, a lot of moms and moms-to-be are getting short shrift.

On top of their other worries, expectant mothers and women on maternity leave may face another hurdle: Being turned down for mortgages. Some lenders appear to be basing their denials on the retro belief that new moms just don’t go back to work.

It’s against the law to use gender-based stereotypes to make mortgage decisions. And, guess what else?  Their assumptions are wrong!  Here are the facts:

  •    In 6 out of 10 families, the woman is the primary breadwinner or a significant breadwinner. Because of the recession, hundreds of thousands more families with young children rely entirely on women’s wages because only mom is working. Women work—and women go back to work—because their families need their income to survive.
  • Even before the recession, four in five employed first-time moms were back at work within a year of having a child, and the majority went back within three months.   Learn more.

Here’s some good news: The Obama Administration has announced that it will investigate lenders who may be breaking the law and disqualifying women because they are pregnant or on leave. We’re glad that this Administration has jumped on the problem, and hope these investigations are only one part of its response. It seems some lenders, and others who set the standards, need some serious education so they stop penalizing pregnant women and new families!

Not only that, but we think a comprehensive effort to combat discrimination against pregnant women and new moms is long overdue.  Because while this news about mortgages is shocking, many of us just aren’t that surprised.  After all, claims of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace have been skyrocketing for years now.

New  moms get lots of advice about what to eat and what not to drink, and how to decorate the nursery and get ready for the baby.  Maybe it’s time we share some advice with employers, bankers, lenders and other institutions about how to treat pregnant women and new moms fairly!

Have you, or has someone you know, experienced problems getting a mortgage because of pregnancy or the birth of a child? Have you experienced other forms of pregnancy discrimination, at work or at school? Tell us your story, so we can share it with the Administration.

Or learn more about your rights under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the laws that protect women from unfair loans and credit decisions.

Time to Step Up!

Published on July 20, 2010 in Portia Wu and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Portia Wu, Vice President

Portia Wu, Vice President

Today the Obama Administration issued a rousing call to action on two of the most important priorities for working women and families — equal pay for equal work, and strong work-family policies. 

The National Partnership has been championing these causes for decades — and so have you!  Today’s event showed that this Administration is squarely in our corner.

It was thrilling to be at this morning’s Middle Class Task Force event. Announcements by one leader after another demonstrated that equal pay and work-family policies are high priorities for this Administration. 

The President’s Equal Pay Task Force is leading the way in ensuring our government steps up enforcement of — and education about — equal pay laws.

Vice President Biden called on the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, saying bluntly: “I say to all those, those few Democrats and all those Republicans who at least thus far have said no, or said nothing: This is your chance, and I mean this sincerely, to get on the right side of history…Step up, man. Step up and change the law.”

Lilly Ledbetter & Portia Wu at the Middle Class Task Force Event

Lilly Ledbetter & Portia Wu at the Middle Class Task Force Event

Lilly Ledbetter stole the show. She was a victim of egregious wage discrimination who fought tirelessly — and successfully — to convince Congress to restore civil rights after an appalling Supreme Court decision… but she didn’t stop there. Now Lilly is campaigning to make our equal pay laws stronger. She told the audience in plain English how wage discrimination hurts families every day by keeping them from buying clothes, putting food on the table, and paying for their children’s education. It hurts women by shortchanging them while they’re working and during their retirement.

I hope Members of Congress heard her message to strengthen our equal pay laws. To be sure that they hear from you too, tell your Senators to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

This morning’s event also featured Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announcing a new, much-needed survey on access to and use of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) — something the National Partnership has fought hard for.  She highlighted the Department’s new guidance on FMLA leave.

The Administration is also building on the White House’s March 2010 workplace flexibility forum to hold events over the next year on workplace flexibility and released a new toolkit to help community groups hold their own workplace flexibility events.

Stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted so you can be part of this important national conversation. In the meantime, learn more about the White House’s Work-Flex Starter Kit and to register an event.

This Morning at the White House…

Published on July 19, 2010 in Portia Wu, Work & Family and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Portia Wu, Vice President

Portia Wu, Vice President

They’ll be talking about you and me, when Vice President Biden hosts an event focusing on some of the issues that matter most to women’s economic security: equal pay and work-family policies.

These issues have long been a top priority for working women, and now we finally have an Administration that’s making them a priority, too.

The National Partnership will be there to hear first-hand about the work of the President’s Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force, which is defending our right to fair pay. We’ll learn about the Administration’s new plan for a nationwide conversation to improve work-family balance for all Americans – and we’ll share that information with you.

With more women in the workforce than ever, our caregiving responsibilities growing, and families relying on women’s wages more than ever, it’s about time.

We’ll report back on this blog after the event. To join it virtually, tune in today at 10:45 a.m. to http://www.whitehouse.gov/live.

Happy 47th Birthday, Equal Pay Act! You haven’t changed a bit!

Published on June 10, 2010 in Sharyn Tejani and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

In 1963, the Equal Pay Act, which prohibits employers from paying women less than men for the same work, became law. A lot has changed in the workplace since then.  But the Equal Pay Act is still pretty much the same as it was 47 years ago.  That is a big part of the reason women working full time are still only paid 77 cents to a man’s dollar—and women of color are paid even less.  Because the Equal Pay Act hasn’t kept up with new civil rights laws or been updated to reflect new workplace realities or reverse harmful court rulings, the Act is hardly ever enforced.  That means employers can easily get away with paying different wages to women and men who are doing the same job. In fact, the law is so weak that employers often find it cheaper to discriminate than to pay fair wages.

typewriters largeAmericans are fed up with this status quo. Last month, in a nationwide poll of registered voters, 84% said they supported “a new law that would provide women more tools to get fair pay in the workplace.” Participants were told that the “law will also make it harder for employers to justify paying different wages for the same work and ensure that businesses that break the law compensate women fairly.” 72% of respondents said they strongly supported such a law. For more information on the polling results, click here:

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/epd47.

That new law is the Paycheck Fairness Act, and we need it because it would make it harder for employers to hide pay discrimination, help train women and girls about salary negotiation, support government collection of critical wage data, and reward employers that have good pay practices. Particularly in these tough economic times, Congress needs to help working families by passing laws that help women get the equal pay they earn.

The House already passed the Paycheck Fairness Act with bipartisan support.  It has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate.  Let your Senator know it is time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act now!

Mother’s Day

Published on May 7, 2010 in Sharyn Tejani and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

My mother has worked full-time in New York for most of her life. New data from the Center for American Progress shows that because of the wage gap between men and women, my mom lost out on $312,000 over her working life.

But my mom’s loss is on the low end. Nationwide, the lifetime wage gap costs women $431,000. For my cousins in Washington State, the number is $524,000; for my sister in Boston, it is $475,000.

Check the data and your state here.

In six out of ten families, a mother is the primary or co-breadwinner, so the wage gap can make a huge difference in a family’s economic security. To see how many families in your state rely on a mother’s income and how much more women in your state could afford without the wage gap, look here.

One important step we can take in solving this problem is to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Act will modernize our equal pay laws so that it will be harder for employers to get away with pay discrimination, and it will protect workers from employer retaliation if they talk about their own salaries at work.

And here is another great thing the Paycheck Fairness Act will do: It will authorize the federal government to collect wage data from employers. That requirement and data will make a huge difference for women. Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the women suing Wal-Mart could go ahead with their sex discrimination lawsuit that alleges that Wal-Mart failed to promote or pay women fairly. If the claims these women have made are correct, the largest private employer in the country has been shortchanging its women employees for years.

Imagine how much sooner wage discrimination would be solved if employers had to report their salary scales to the government. Right-thinking employers would see differences in the reports, analyze the problem, and fix their wages if the differences were due to discrimination. And wrong-thinking employers could be targeted by the civil rights enforcement agencies.

The Paycheck Fairness Act has passed the House and has 39 cosponsors in the Senate. We need a vote on this critical legislation now.

Contact your Senators and tell them you support the Paycheck Fairness Act—because I really can’t afford a $312,000 Mother’s Day gift.

Happy (?) Equal Pay Day

Published on April 20, 2010 in Debra Ness and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Debra Ness

Debra Ness

Today is Equal Pay Day — a day to think about the wage gap, and how it affects women, families and the country.

Equal Pay Day is April 20th, because that’s the day we mark for how long it takes for the wages paid to women working full-time, beginning in January 2009, to finally catch up to the wages that were paid to full-time working men in 2009. In other words, a woman has to work for nearly four months in 2010 for her wages to equal to what a man was paid in 2009.

In this recession, with families facing crushing economic pressure, Equal Pay Day has special meaning. Women’s earnings are more vital than ever to the economic security of their families. Nearly four in ten mothers are primary breadwinners, bringing home the majority of their family’s earnings. Nearly two-thirds are breadwinners or co-breadwinners, bringing home at least a quarter of their family’s earnings. Yet a woman has to work nearly four months longer than a man to bring home the same amount of pay.

The wage gap hurts working women and families each and every day, cutting deeply into their ability to meet basic needs. If we got rid of the wage gap, here’s what hard-working families across the country would be able to afford:

In Maine: 65 more weeks of food (that’s food for 1.25 years!)
In California: 7 months of rent payments
In Virginia: 7 months of mortgage and utility payments
In Arkansas: 3 years of family health care premiums
In North Carolina: more than 3,000 gallons of gas

To see how the wage gap affects women and families in your state, click here.

To help fix the pay gap, we need Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It would make it harder for employers to hide pay discrimination, help train women and girls about salary negotiation, support government collection of critical wage data, and reward employers that have good pay practices.

The House of Representatives passed it last year, but a vote of 256 to 163. The Administration supports this bill. It’s time for the Senate to act.

Join us in urging the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act now. Women have rent to pay, and food and gasoline to buy. Our bills won’t wait, and neither can we!

How Much is the Wage Gap Costing Your Family?

Published on March 12, 2010 in Sharyn Tejani and Workplace Fairness. 1 Comment
Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Eight months of groceries.  That is what the wage gap is costing women and their families.  Don’t believe it? Do the math.

According to data just released from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the weekly gap in earnings between men and women is $162 which translates into $8,424 per year.  The USDA estimates that a family of four that spends “liberally” on its groceries spends $264.10 per week.  Put those two together, and you have 32 weeks—eight months worth of groceries—that women and their families miss out on because of the gender wage gap.  Of course, if you use the “thrifty” family weekly grocery bill ($133.40), the number of weeks of groceries is even higher: more than a year’s worth.

What can be done? We can pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It provides a comprehensive approach to stopping wage discrimination.

Among its many badly needed provisions, the Paycheck Fairness Act will give women information about pay discrimination.  Right now, many employers forbid their workers from talking about their wages.  This secrecy around wages works to the employer’s advantage.  If workers don’t know how much the person sitting next to them is being paid, they can’t uncover wage discrimination.  But with the Paycheck Fairness Act in place, workers would be able to talk about their salaries and learn their coworkers’ salaries without fearing employer retaliation.

In addition to giving us the tools to unearth wage discrimination, the Paycheck Fairness Act would modernize equal pay laws so that victims of gender wage discrimination are able to get the same types of damages that are available under civil rights statutes that protect against discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.

The House has already passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, and yesterday the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing on equal pay that focused on the bill.  We need a vote by the full Senate soon. So let your Senator know that you support the Paycheck Fairness Act—and then start making your grocery list.

Celebrating Ledbetter: End Pay Discrimination Against Women Now!

Published on January 25, 2010 in Sharyn Tejani and Workplace Fairness. 0 Comments
Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

Sharyn Tejani, Senior Policy Counsel

This week we celebrate the one-year anniversary of enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: a law that righted a terrible Supreme Court decision and set the stage for the next fair pay law we need — the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Lilly Ledbetter’s story is an inspiration.  Almost 20 years after starting work as one of just a few women at a tire plant, she received an anonymous note letting her know that she was being paid less than her male coworkers — even those who had worked there less time than she had.  She sued and a jury ruled in her favor, but the Supreme Court reversed the ruling.  Lilly continued fighting and she won where it matters most — in the court of public opinion and with Congress.  Read more about the case and the law here.

But even after Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and President Obama made it the first bill he signed into law, wage discrimination persists.  Women still are paid just 77 cents to a man’s dollar and the inequities remain, even when education and type of job are factored out. For some alarming statistics on the extent of the wage gap, click here.  So, as Lilly Ledbetter said on the day that her bill was signed, now we need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. 

The Paycheck Fairness Act will help stop wage discrimination in four important ways:

  1. Making it harder for employers to justify wage discrimination;
  2. Prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages;
  3. Authorizing the government to collect wage data so civil rights enforcement agencies can target their resources; nad
  4. Offering employers technical assistance to help them analyze their pay data and make sure they are not discriminating.

Learn more about the Paycheck Fairness Act here.

The House of Representatives has already passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, and it has 35 cosponsors in the Senate.  Click here to let Senators know that you support equal wages for women and the Paycheck Fairness Act. 

Let’s honor Lilly Ledbetter and give ourselves something else to celebrate. Take action today!

Pregnancy Discrimination On Wisteria Lane!

Published on January 2, 2010 in Kesia Brown, Work & Family and Workplace Fairness. 1 Comment
Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives

If you haven’t seen the latest episodes of Desperate Housewives, you have missed more than just the usual melodrama swirling around the residents of Wisteria Lane. A new storyline may be all-too-familiar to many viewers — a woman facing pregnancy discrimination on the job.

Lynnette, a working wife, mother of four, and “desperate housewife” chose not to reveal her pregnancy to Carlos, her boss and longtime friend and neighbor. When Lynnette received a promotion over a coworker who was pregnant, it became clear to her that she would be discriminated against as well if Carlos found out about her pregnancy.

Her fears were confirmed in a recent episode. Once Carlos discovered that Lynnette was pregnant, she was quickly fired. Although Carlos claimed that she was fired because she refused to take a promotion and relocate, it was clear to her — and to the audience — that the real reason was her pregnancy. Can this happen in real life, or is it just another outlandish plot?

Statistics show that the Desperate Housewives pregnancy discrimination storyline is neither exaggerated nor rare. In 2008, pregnancy discrimination charges rose to their highest level in the history of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which saw an almost 13 percent increase in claims over the previous year. And the most recent increase is part of a trend; since 1992, pregnancy discrimination charges to the EEOC and its companion agencies have skyrocketed by 86 percent. Read about the increase here.

Some cases rival the drama on Wisteria Lane. In 2004, the Department of Justice joined a lawsuit against the Washington D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, claiming that women in training for the program were required to take pregnancy tests and told that they could lose their jobs if they became pregnant. As a result, two women said they chose to terminate their pregnancies for fear of losing their jobs. The complaint the U.S. Department of Justice filed against the employer is here. The case was eventually settled and the women received $100,000 each.

In 2007, the EEOC settled a case of pregnancy discrimination for $350,000 against Mothers Ware Inc., which sells maternity clothes. According to the EEOC, the store refused to hire pregnant women and discriminated against a supervisor who complained about the policy. Read the EEOC’s press release about the case here.

In August, the EEOC brought a pregnancy discrimination suit against a New Jersey trucking company, Decker Transport. According to the EEOC, when one of the women working at Decker informed her boss she was pregnant, she was immediately put on leave and told she should not come back until she got “rid of the problem.” When she refused, she was fired.

Those are women who spoke up and complained. Many more may be afraid to do so, or may not even know that discrimination against pregnant women is illegal.
Find out more about your rights here.

Given the economic crisis, it is especially important that women have secure employment. For those outside of Wisteria Lane, pregnancy discrimination truly can create a desperate situation. Not only does it cause emotional suffering, but it also threatens the economic security of working families who rely on women’s income.

Learn more about the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and what protections it provides.