“Equal pay for equal work” carries with it significant cultural meaning. For people who support the idea of equal pay rights, the phrase means paying women the same as men for completing the same job. For people who believe the Equal Pay Act amounts to a “handout,” the phrase tends to mean that business owners determine what work is equal.
Past Equal Pay Legislation
The Equal Pay Act, passed as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1963, is the provision prohibiting basing a pay scale on someone’s gender. Though the equal pay law is gender-neutral, this piece of legislation is aimed at giving women pay equivalent to that of men for the same work.
Controversy Over Equal Pay Rights
Equal pay legislation is not without controversy, however. The original Equal Pay Act specifies three tests a pay scale needs to pass. First, the pay scale cannot be based openly on the employee’s gender. Second, the pay scale must be based on the employee’s job requirements. Equal pay and comparable worth are interrelated in that the comparable worth of employees, according to the equal pay law, is based on the job duties of employees more than extraneous factors about the employees, such as their years of experience. Finally, the Equal Pay Act requires that the two employees being compared work in similar conditions.
When Congress passed the equal pay legislation, many people believed salaries would level out and that women and men would be on par quickly. Today, though, equal pay rights advocates argue that equal pay for equal work still does not exist. Instead, women in high-level white-collar occupations, such as physicians, often get paid a lower percentage compared to their male counterparts than women in blue collar jobs.
Current Equal Pay Law Campaigns
In 1996, a group of work formed the National Committee on Pay Equity, a group with the sole purpose of drawing attention to the continuing pay discrepancy between women and men, as well as between white and minority workers. Various grassroots organizers work through NCPE to host events on a Tuesday every April to bring attention to this issue. In particular, these activists are trying to draw attention to the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which would reverse a Supreme Court decision stating employees have only 180 days from the initial paycheck to file a lawsuit. Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for decades before realizing she was underpaid, but the Supreme Court’s decision was that Ledbetter’s claim passed the statute of limitations for EPA violations.
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced equal pay and comparable worth legislation into the Senate in 2005. This equal pay legislation, called the Paycheck Fairness Act, in 2005, but thus far the bill has not passed, though it has been reintroduced annually.
Brandi Rhoades - Brandi Rhoades is a freelance writer working on articles for the web, ranging from blog posts to marketing letters to keyword-driven ...
