Senate Republicans block fair pay for workers

Last year the Supreme Court’s Judge Samuel Alito wrote the “Ledbetter decision,” which makes it easier for businesses to employ discriminatory pay practices with virtual legal impunity. This was another in a long line of big business wins and another unfortunate and clear loss for American workers.

In May of 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, immediately after the Court denied Ledbetter’s claim of pay discrimination. And yet late last month, in true Republican fashion, Senate Republicans filibustered against fair and equitable pay for women and others who had been unfairly taken advantage of by their employers.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was named after the woman who worked for Goodyear Tire Incorporated for nineteen years. She discovered that her supervisors had been paying her male co-workers more than they had been paying her for doing the exact same work.

A jury found in her favor, and awarded compensation for back pay, as well as justified punitive damages. Republican appointees in the appellate judicial system, however, overturned the jury’s decision and using a “technicality” felt it necessary to throw out the award.

Even though the Bush appointed, right-leaning Supreme Court refused to uphold the jury’s decision, they even agreed that Goodyear Tire Incorporated’s behavior was illegal, so it must have been an obvious act.

The conservative majority on the Court cited a rule that required Ledbetter to sue the company she worked for within six months of her “first” paycheck. Since Ledbetter did not learn about the pay inequity until years later, she did not qualify to receive judicial justice.

Clearly, the amount of pay that individual workers receive is not common knowledge, nor is it publicly posted, so that all workers can compare their salaries. It may be virtually impossible for an employee to be able to find out if she or he is being paid fairly or not within six months of said discrimination.

The Fair Pay Act changes the rules to give workers who face illegal discriminatory practices regarding wages, whether based on gender, race, age, disability or religion, the legal recourse to sue six months after their “last” unfair pay check.

So as not to break with their big-business interests, Senate Republicans blocked the Fair Pay Restoration Act from moving to an up or down vote. Facing a tough cloture vote, it fell just short of the needed 60 votes to move on to final passage.

All the Democratic Senators came through for the American workers, while as expected, enough of the Republicans, feeling the nudge of big-business lobbyists, caved in and voted against worker’s rights.

Presidential candidate John McCain, who was out on his “straight-talk express campaign,” didn’t even bother to make it back to Washington to vote at all. But his spokesperson made it clear that he wouldn’t have voted for it even it he had made it back, citing potential lawsuits as a reason. The reality is that the lobbyists who are now running the former “maverick’s” campaign are evidently reigning him in far to the right of center, which is a blow to workers across the country who might have voted for him.

Both Democratic presidential candidates hit the Senate floor in order to cast their votes, improving the chance of passage. On CNN Senator Obama, Democratic frontrunner, criticized McCain’s opposition, claiming that the Republican was out of touch with America’s workers, and that pay discrimination based on gender, as was Ledbetter’s, should not be tolerated in the United States of America today. I suppose it is hard for McCain to relate to the average American woman, being married to a multi-millionaire, beer-heiress, it must be hard for him to understand ordinary American working people.

It should be noted regarding the numbers that the “pure vote” on the cloture was 57-41. But in a “procedural move” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, switched his vote to a “no.” This affords him the opportunity to bring up the vote again at a future date, which Reid has unequivocally vowed to do.

The Fair Pay Restoration Act will not only fix the Court’s misinterpretation of Title VII, but will also ensure that pay discrimination victims get their rightful day in court, by returning to the longstanding rule assuring that each and every discriminatory paycheck is treated as it should be, as a new act of discrimination.

With American women still receiving 77 cents or less to every dollar that men receive, even though civil rights laws banned wage discrimination over forty years ago, we cannot afford to allow the progress that has been made to be lost now.

Fair and equitable pay is just one thing that voters will be looking at in the fall. Another concern will certainly be the type of Supreme Court appointments that the winning party is likely to make.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Carol Jensen is a long-time Barstow resident, graduating from Kennedy High School and Barstow College, where she was an English instructor for many years. Much of her time now is spent writing political and social commentary. She may be contacted at cajensen49@msn.com.