President Obama Takes a Stand for Women on Equal Pay Day
Women in the U.S. make roughly one-third less than men doing the same jobs, which means it would take a woman from January 1 to April 8 the following year (or more than 15 months) to earn what a man does in 12 months. That’s why workers across the country recognize today as Equal Pay Day—a reminder that we still have a long way to go to achieving gender equality in the workplace.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, which would ban employers from punishing employers for speaking about their wages, was voted down in 2012 and is expected to fail again this week.
But President Obama is not waiting any longer for Congress to help fix the wage gap. He signed an executive order today that could make a huge difference in the way employers pay their workers.
First, the executive order bans all federal contractors from retaliating against those who discuss their salaries with coworkers. Rules banning pay-related discussions have allowed employers to hide gender and race inequalities, as in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who didn’t learn until it was too late that she was being underpaid. When Ledbetter finally discovered that she was making thousands less than her male co-workers and sued her employer, the Supreme Court ruled that she filed too long after her first unequal paycheck for the complaint to be valid. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research released a report in January that showed 51 percent of women are discouraged or prohibited from discussing their salaries with other employees—not to mention that there are policies in place that prohibit workers such as Ledbetter from discussing their pay.
more at link:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/04/08/president-obama-takes-a-stand-for-women-on-equal-pay-day/
= new reply since forum marked as read
