Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Republicans Say Women Are Worth Less

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Senate Republicans blocked fair pay for women today.  John McCain thinks Republicans were right to block the fair pay law because he thinks if the company can secretly pay women less for more than 180 days, they should get away with it consequence-free.  

This is another good reason to vote Susan Collins (R-Maine) out of the Senate.  She says she supports fair pay legislation, but when she asked her fellow Republicans to vote with her, they just ignored her.  Collins is useless in terms of pulling the Republican Party away from the extreme right.  Republican Moderates like her chose hardliners such as Mitch McConnell to lead their party, essentially selling out equal rights with their very first votes in the Senate session to support a reactionary agenda.

Other useless “moderate Republicans” include Snowe of Maine, Smith of Oregon, Coleman of Minnesota and Sununu of New Hampshire.

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    • the question is when you can sue.

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      p>It seems to me that a limit of 180 days after your first paycheck is far too short.  I have no idea if the proposed bill (which extends it to 180 days after any paycheck) includes pension checks, as the GOP has claimed.  If it doesn’t, then it seems fair to me — after all, if your last paycheck with the company was discriminatory, you ought to be able to sue for damages.

      <

      p>That written, I do understand the GOP concern about carrying the risk indefinitely, and so I do understand the concept of a statute of limitations at some point.  180 days after the first paycheck is far too short methinks.  180 (heck, 365, or 730 even) days after the last actual paycheck for hours worked seems far more reasonable to me.

      <

      p>Ultimately, I just don’t understand how people who aren’t upper-middle (or richer) class white heterosexual married men perceive the GOP as being on their side.

      • The Ledbetter decision was disingenuous.  Everybody on that court knew that most employees aren’t going to be able figure out they’ve been discriminated against inside 180 days from the first decision to discriminate.  So any concerns John McCain or his brethren offer about this are just smokescreens to hide their belief that ordinary people (like employees) shouldn’t be viewed as equals to them (the elites–and owning a Bud distributorship makes you elite).

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        p>Even if it included pension checks–so what?  If a pension is part of a contract, you should be able to go to court to get that contract fulfilled if the other party cheated you.

        <

        p>America has a good business climate (unlike, say, Russia) because contracts can be enforced by our courts.  If Republicans want to make it so ordinary people can’t get justice in courts, employees will start to notice they are being cheated–and that could have bad consequences for the business climate.

      • Here is a synopsis of the two arguments –

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        p>

        The Supreme Court voted 5-4 last May 29 to throw out her complaint, saying she had waited too long to sue. Under the justices’ decision, which they said was based on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, an employee must sue within a 180-day deadline of a decision involving pay if the employee thinks it involved race, sex, religion or national origin.

        That opens the door for corporations to discriminate, Democrats said. The legislation would restart the statute of limitations for pay discrimination lawsuits each time an employee gets a paycheck affected by sexism or racism.

        <

        p>Why did Ms. Ledbetter wait 19 years to file suit?  What reasonable accomodation could an employer have made for redress?  What employer could know why a decison was made over a decade earlier, by a person no longer there?

        <

        p>The existing law, in effect for 44 years, has a 180 day standard.  There is a wealth of existing case law which gives employers guidance for correct practices.  BTW – would this apply only to those suing under the 1964 law?  What about ADA complaints – would they be ignored?

        <

        p>The Court’s decision was correct in light of existing law.  Is 180 days too short?  Maybe.  But there has to be some common ground between too short and no standards at all.  This was not legislation, it was theatre.

        • The Fair Pay law would have established 180 days as starting at the last paycheck, instead of the first as the excessively pro-corporate SCOTUS chose to do.  

          <

          p>You wrote:

          But there has to be some common ground between too short and no standards at all.

          The choice here was whether to start the 180-day clock ticking at the latest paycheck or the first (SCOTUS’ stance).  Your sentence pretends the bill had no time limit.  

          <

          p>And in the original case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear:

          Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.

          <

          p>Maybe I’m being hasty in calling you disingenuous.  I assumed you knew what the facts of Ledbetter were.  Maybe you’ve been trusting Republican sources of information on this, and their dishonesty has put you in the position of defending indefensible discrimination.

          • But where exactly ‘over time’ did things fall out of synch?  And if she knew – why did she wait until she retired to file suit, in 1998?  Why do you claim FIRST paycheck?  The facts of the case state that she was paid equally at first, but the change occured later.  What were the facts surrounding that (dare I say it – was maternity leave involved, depriving her of step raises, which seems to hav been Goodyear’s practice?  I don’t know).  She claims several years of discrimination – when did this clock start ticking, exactly?

            <

            p>From the Court decision –

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            p>

            Because a pay-setting decision is a “discrete act,” it follows that the period for filing an EEOC charge begins when the act occurs. Petitioner, having abandoned her claim under the Equal Pay Act, asks us to deviate from our prior decisions in order to permit her to assert her claim under Title VII. Petitioner also contends that discrimination in pay is different from other types of employment discrimination and thus should be governed by a different rule. But because a pay-setting decision is a discrete act that occurs at a particular point in time, these arguments must be rejected. We therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

            <

            p>If anything, pay inequity is EASIER to prove than something like being passed over for promotion because of race, handicap, religion, etc., because it involves a tangible, rather than circumstantial, inequity.

            <

            p>As I said, hard cases make bad law.  Why the push into making each paycheck a new potential death warrant for litigation, instead of expanding the cap from 180 to 365 days?

            <

            p>The bill as written was theatre, not law.

            • … its the first paycheck because the clock starts when the pay rate is first set.  I think that also makes ‘first paycheck’ also misleading, since your agreed rate can be set months before it takes affect.

              <

              p>No source to cite, but that’s what I vaguely remember.

              • Wouldn’t it have to be her first UNEQUAL paycheck?  And I agree about rates in advance, although they aren’t common for managers.

                <

                p>And seriously – do you KNOW what this would do to the cost of liability insurance?  Tail coverage?  And who would pay that but consumers?

                • That’s simply not how economics works.

                  <

                  p>When business costs go up, it cuts into both producer and consumer surplus.  Consumers will pay higher prices and businesses will make less profit.

                  <

                  p>So, to answer your question, the business owners would pay part of that cost too.

            • “…because it involves a tangible, rather than circumstantial, inequity”

              <

              p>The problem is that the necessary tangible specifics are hard to get since corporate payroll data isn’t available to most employees.  So what you have is 180 days to find some way to ‘steal’ the data, because you aren’t going to get it absent a subpoena and nobody is going to take your case to file a subpoena while they don’t know the ‘tangible’ facts enough to evaluate the worth of your claim.

                • … reading somewhere about an earlier bill that died.  Or maybe it was a previous version of this one.  Looked for it, but couldn’t find it.

                  <

                  p>Even if your right and it is a win/win for Dems, it doesn’t follow that their preferred outcome isn’t passage.  Can’t imagine why they would want to pass an item that speaks to their platform.

              • How do you think the employee became aware in the first place?  They asked another employee.

                <

                p>I think I’m with Porcupine on this; the proposal seems to be written to enrich the employment law bar.

            • If the initial decision to discriminate is unlawful (whenever it happens) then every subsequent paycheck is a chance for the company to get right with the law and stop discriminating.  How is the decision to pay less unlawful but the lower paycheck itself not discrimination, too?

              <

              p>The EEOC found Ledbetter the victim of discrimination and so did the jury that first heard the case.  More from Ginsburg’s dissent:

              The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. Relying on Goodyear’s system of annual merit-based raises, the court held that Ledbetter’s claim, in relevant part, was time barred. 421 F. 3d, at 1171, 1182-1183. Title VII provides that a charge of discrimination “shall be filed within [180] days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(e)(1).1 Ledbetter charged, and proved at trial, that within the 180-day period, her pay was substantially less than the pay of men doing the same work. Further, she introduced evidence sufficient to establish that discrimination against female managers at the Gadsden plant, not performance inadequacies on her part, accounted for the pay differential. See, e.g., App. 36-47, 51-68, 82-87, 90-98, 112-113. That evidence was unavailing, the Eleventh Circuit held, and the Court today agrees, because it was incumbent on Ledbetter to file charges year-by-year, each time Goodyear failed to increase her salary commensurate with the salaries of male peers. Any annual pay decision not contested immediately (within 180 days), the Court affirms, becomes grandfathered, a fait accompli beyond the province of Title VII ever to repair.

                 The Court’s insistence on immediate contest overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination. Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time. Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials. Small initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves.
                 Pay disparities are thus significantly different from adverse actions “such as termination, failure to promote, … or refusal to hire,” all involving fully communicated discrete acts, “easy to identify” as discriminatory.

        • …but this…

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          p>

          What employer could know why a decision was made over a decade earlier, by a person no longer there?

          <

          p>…ain’t gonna fly.

          <

          p>First of all, Corporations (or any other business entities) can’t have it both ways.  They are afforded legal “person” status which allows them a lot of rights and privileges, and it also comes with liabilities.  Just as any person would have to answer for their torts any time during the statute of limitations (and some are long) so too must corporations, change in employees notwithstanding.

          <

          p>Further, the standard that exists for gender discrimination is not proving that the actions of a single employee (or group of employees) was discriminatory but, rather, that the discrimination must be shown to be condoned, either affirmatively or passively by the corporation . . . a much higher standard. So, to claim that a company may be unfairly held liable for the misdeeds of an individual, perhaps acting of their own volition, who is no longer associated with the company is fatuous.  The company is held liable for being so remiss in their management that they failed to make any reasonable attempt to prevent discrimination or because they learned about discrimination and chose to do nothing about it, or because the discrimination was carried out by the control group, etc.  In other words, because of the company’s actions, not the actions of an employee.

    • But this lawyer says the summary is completely accurate, given the existing biases in the workplace.

      <

      p>I’m eager, however, to see if Senator Porcupine can spin this vote into a step forward for women.

      • It says the bil lost 56-42.  Last time I checked, there weren’t 56 Republicans in the senate.  Sooo….either democracts voted against it or you aren’t posting links with accurate facts.  

    • I checked.

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      p>Only Harry Reid voted against it, and that’s a parliamentary maneuver giving him the power to bring it up again if he likes.

      <

      p>The Republican Party has definitely lined up against Fair Pay… they’ll pay a price for this.

    • Those voting Nay:

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      p>Alexander (R-TN)
      Allard (R-CO)
      Barrasso (R-WY)
      Bennett (R-UT)
      Bond (R-MO)
      Brownback (R-KS)
      Bunning (R-KY)
      Burr (R-NC)
      Chambliss (R-GA)
      Coburn (R-OK)
      Cochran (R-MS)
      Corker (R-TN)
      Cornyn (R-TX)
      Craig (R-ID)
      Crapo (R-ID)
      DeMint (R-SC)
      Dole (R-NC)
      Domenici (R-NM)
      Ensign (R-NV)
      Enzi (R-WY)
      Graham (R-SC)
      Grassley (R-IA)
      Gregg (R-NH)
      Hatch (R-UT)
      Hutchison (R-TX)
      Inhofe (R-OK)
      Isakson (R-GA)
      Kyl (R-AZ)
      Lugar (R-IN)
      Martinez (R-FL)
      McConnell (R-KY)
      Murkowski (R-AK)
      Reid (D-NV)
      Roberts (R-KS)
      Sessions (R-AL)
      Shelby (R-AL)
      Stevens (R-AK)
      Thune (R-SD)
      Vitter (R-LA)
      Voinovich (R-OH)
      Warner (R-VA)
      Wicker (R-MS)

  4. This is another good reason to vote Susan Collins (R-Maine) out of the Senate.  She says she supports fair pay legislation, but when she asked her fellow Republicans to vote with her, they just ignored her.

    <

    p>Isn’t this throwing the baby out with the bathwater?  We should be less concerned about voting out people who want to do the right thing but are unable to persuade others, and more concerned about the folks that don’t want to do the right thing in the first place.

    • between replacing Susan Collins (R-ME) or McConnell (R-KY) with a moderate-to-liberal Democrat who would be likely to continue to win reelections, I’d pick McC.

      <

      p>But that’s a false choice, since there’s no reason why improvements couldn’t be made in both cases.  Furthermore, Maine is far more likely to re-elect a moderate-to-liberal Democrat when the time came than Kentucky.  That’s yet another reason to try to replace Mrs. Collins.

      <

      p>That is, of course, in addition to the first votes in the Senate — the majority/minority leader votes, in which Collins votes for a GOP leader who is far more conservative than she or the majority of her constituency are.

  5. Eliot Spitzer paid his hooker $4,300/hr whereas Republican Senator David Vitter reportedly paid his hookers only $300/hr! Disgraceful, GOP.

    <

    p>Not to mention, WA State Rep Richard Curtis allegedly offered a gay hooker $1,000 for sex! Talk about men earning more pay for the same job! What an outrageous act of pay discrimination on Vitter’s part. When will the GOP put the same premium on women’s sexual labor that they apply to men’s sexual labor? Clearly, the GOP does think women are worth less.  

      • How do you know he got ripped off? Haven’t you heard? Everything is more expensive in NY.

    • “Republicans Say Women Are Worth Less”? I’ll say!  Eliot Spitzer paid his hooker $4,300/hr whereas Republican Senator David Vitter reportedly paid his hookers only $300/hr! Disgraceful, GOP.  

      <

      p>A democrat has to pay a lot more than a republican to get a woman to sleep with him.  Pity really…

      • ….Spitzer was paying the amount necessary to cover health insurance, tuition re-imbursement and retirement account contributions.  Vitter chose to hire “independent contractors” to avoid paying any of the benefits that republicans think the government shouldn’t ensure people have avaiable to them.

  6. Republicans on this one. The time to ensure you are getting paid what you deserve is prior to negotiating your next pay increase with your manager. Unless she could show that, when asked, her employer showed false salary ranges, working at a company for almost 20 years and then crying foul is ridiculous. As an employee at will, she bore responsibility for ensuring the terms were satisfactory to her.

    <

    p>While searching for the text of the bill, I found this introduction:

    <

    p>To amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, and for other purposes.

    <

    p>There’s something missing from the list — the Equal Pay Act. Why wouldn’t that bill be included?

    <

    p>Turns out the Equal Pay Act has a longer statute of limitations — two years. Also turns out, that Ledbetter didn’t sue under the Equal Pay Act.

    <

    p>Negotiating one’s salary isn’t easy. But it’s a skill that can be learned. Six months seems a reasonable length of time to start litigation. Waiting until you retire is just cowardly.

    • You certainly have a lot of nerve to declare Ms. Ledbetter a “coward.”  She took a fight right to a huge multinational corporation.  I forgot, though, the only heroes in your work are the folks who take on unions, those usurious bloodsuckers who demand living wages.  

      <

      p>What is involved in finding out you have been discriminated against?  First, you have to find out what other managers who are doing the same job as you make.  I work in a business right now where I have NO IDEA what anyone else makes except the two people I supervise.

      <

      p>And then put this into context.  She was a branch manager – meaning she probably was the highest ranking employee in her area.  Secondly, it was a male-dominated group in a male-dominated industry – probably not the type of people who were inviting her into their inner circle.  Thirdly, those of you who say this decision was make once are not thinking very hard.  You don’t think that her manager had a spreadsheet entitled:  “Branch Manager Salaries”  “Lily Ledbetter – $50,000, Manny McManly $80,000.” They had no idea her salary was lower all these years?  

      <

      p>And guess what?  Now, after the first six months women work somewhere, management is off the hook.  

      <

      p>The fact that “bittergate” got more attention than legislation that would help 50% of the population is unbelievable.  

      <

      p>And I will save the term cowardly for those who say that “excess litigation” was the reason why they voted against it.  

      • Since when did filing a lawsuit constitute an act of bravery? She bore no risk by suing her former employer, as she had already left the company. If there was a problem with sex discrimination at Goodyear, the brave thing to do would have been to confront it during her 20 years of employment, as surely there were other women in similar circumstances.

        • You don’t think filing sexual harassment lawsuits, anti-discrimination lawsuits, or corporate whistle blower lawsuits are always cake walks, do you?

          <

          p>Movies like “North Country”, “The Accused”, and “A Civil Action” are three inspired-by-true-events movies that are based on act-of-bravery lawsuits I remember off the top of my head. There’s countless more and a whole genre of film & TV drama based on lawsuits that are filed because of acts of bravery.

          <

          p>In the age of domestic violence, threats of retaliation, and economic pressure, it’s not hard to imagine instances where filing a lawsuit constitutes an act of bravery. I’m only loosely following the conversation loosely and am not fluent in the facts, but it really isn’t that hard to imagine scenarios where Ms. Ledbetter would feel intimidated about advocating for more pay fore herself. You wouldn’t want to lose your job, your income, your benefits, and your retirement plan, would you Ms. Ledbetter?

          <

          p>I strongly suggest seeing North Country – it’s a great flick anyway, and it shows how filing a lawsuit requires bravery. I’m not saying it will change your perspective on Ledbetter, but it was a hell of a flick.  

          • I absolutely agree with you. To pursue action when you have something at risk — especially when you are still working for the employer — takes courage.

            <

            p>I don’t see the risk in Ms. Ledbetter’s case. From what I read on the wiki, she sued for pay discrimination after accepting early retirement.  

        • From Gail Collins in the NYT

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          p>

          Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., for almost 20 years – the only woman who ever managed to stick it out in what was not exactly a female-friendly environment. When she was near retirement, she got an anonymous letter listing the salaries of the men who held the same job. While she was making $3,727 a month, the lowest paid man, with far less seniority, was getting $4,286.

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