Please help do something to ensure that women (maybe even you or the other women in your life) get equal pay for equal work. Join "I Am Progress" and "Momrising.org" in their campaign supporting the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. "I Am Progress" is afflilated with the Center for American Progress and "MomsRising" was started by Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org.
Lilly Ledbetter, whose equal-pay suit was overturned last year, greets Sen. Barack Obama before his vote on a bill to make it easier to sue in such cases. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
What would your family do with $434,000?Improving pay equity would create substantial economic gains for women and their families. A new report found that women lose approximately $434,000, on average, over a 40-year period because of the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap is the annual difference in median wages between men and women who are employed full-time and it widens over time. Other studies show that moms, especially single moms, fare even worse with the gender wage gap.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act are important steps toward making sure that women are paid what they are worth by making it easier for women to recover lost wages due to bosses who discriminate and by requiring the federal government to be more proactive in preventing and battling wage discrimination.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is standing in the way of fair pay by opposing pay equity reform proposals in Congress that are needed to achieve pay equity. Tell the U.S. Chamber of Commerce what your family would do with $434,000 and more importantly, tell the Chamber to get out of the way of fair pay!
http://www2.americanprogressaction.org/o/507/t/1371/content.jsp?content_KEY=2217 Information about Lilly Ledbetter can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042301553.htmlAt issue is the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, who for 19 years was the lone female supervisor at an Alabama tire plant. Months before she retired in 1998, Ledbetter learned that she was being paid thousands of dollars less than her male co-workers. She filed suit and was awarded more than $3 million by a jury. Last May, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that Ledbetter had waited too long to file her case. The court said she should have complained within 180 days of a specific discriminatory event.
About the
Paycheck Fairness Act, Hillary Clinton says:
More than forty years after the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by President Kennedy, women still earn only $.76 cents for every dollar men earn for doing the same work. The pay disparity is even larger among African Americans and Latinos; it affects women at all levels of income and across a wide range of occupations; and the gap widens as women age. To address this problem, which costs families an average of $4,000 a year, I have championed the Paycheck Fairness Act. This legislation will help prevent pay discrimination in the first place and provide critical tools to resolve it if it occurs by, among other things:
* Prohibiting employers from punishing employees who share their salary information with their co-workers; (Sharing salary information is often essential for understanding that discrimination exists and addressing it.)
* Toughening the penalties associated with violating the Equal Pay Act;
* Teaching women and girls negotiation skills; (Women are 8 times less likely to negotiate their starting salaries then men and if a woman with a starting salary of $25,000 fails to negotiate for $5,000 more a year, she stands to lose more than $568,000 by age 60.)
* Rewarding model employers; and
* Strengthening the ability of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to crackdown on equal pay violations.
Please go to
I Am Progress and sign the letter to the US Chamber of Commerce.
The letter, which you can edit and add your own comments, is as follows:
Dear U.S. Chamber of Commerce
I am writing to ask that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce take a positive step towards supporting fair pay for women by ending your opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Improving pay equity would create substantial economic gains for women and their families. A new report found that the average woman loses approximately $434,000 over a 40 year period because of the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap is the annual difference in median wages between men and women who are employed full-time and it widens over time. And moms, especially single moms, fare even worse.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act are important steps toward making sure that women are paid what they are worth by making it easier for women to recover lost wages due to bosses who discriminate and by requiring the federal government to be more proactive in preventing and battling wage discrimination.
Your mission statement reads, "To advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility." Would you please explain how opposing efforts to pay women what they are worth advances that mission?
Improving pay equity leads to greater economic security for women and their families. It improves a family’s ability to send several kids to college, to set up secure retirement accounts, and to make payments on home mortgages.
Again, please end your opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Should the Chamber not do so, I intend to follow-up with my local chamber of commerce as well as businesses I support that are members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Please note, my Senators and Representative are copied on this email.
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