By Emily Doud, CJ 370

Editorial

“Cause he wakes up in the morning, and he goes to work by nine, and he comes back home at five thirty, gets the same train every time, cause his world is built ‘round punctuality, it never fails. And he’s oh so good, and he’s oh so fine, and he’s oh so healthy in his body and his mind. He’s a well respected man about town, doing the best things so conservatively.”

We go about our lives trying to avoid hiccups that may occur, trying to avoid stress, although it always seems to find us. The bottom line is, we are all out there, both men and women, trying to make life work even though at times it may not.

This 1966 song recorded by The Kinks depicts a young man who does the things he needs to do to get by in life, an almost routine-like clarity that most achieve in life without too much effort. We wake up for work, we work to earn money and use money in order to live, the operative word here being “we,” meaning both men and women. Yet still today, almost 90 years after the nineteenth amendment was passed allowing women to vote, women are still feeling the oppression of a “man-made” America.

The recently publicized case of Lilly Ledbetter, who worked for 20 years as a supervisor at a Goodyear, tire plant in Alabama, has become the namesake of a new equal pay act. Upon retiring from Goodyear she found out that her male counterparts were making significantly more than Ledbetter for doing the same work; according to a report from MSNBC, she was making about $600 to $1500 less a month than her co-workers. She sued.

She won her case at first, but Goodyear decided to appeal and eventually the case ended up at the Supreme Court. According to the lawsuit, the court found that Ledbetter had not filed the suit in a timely manner and should have filed a complaint after receiving the first paycheck she believed was discriminatory and lower than her male co-workers. Ledbetter contends that she did not know she was receiving less money, and really, how could she have known. Access to payroll records is not always made available to employees.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 passed through Congress and became the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law on Jan. 6. This bill allows women or those discriminated against to file a lawsuit to receive compensation for funds lost due to discriminatory practices, as in sex discrimination that is relevant in the case of Lilly Ledbetter.

President Obama said of the bill “there are no second class citizens in our work places, and that it’s not just unfair and illegal -- it’s bad for business — to pay someone less because of their gender, or their age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability.”

Lilly Ledbetter said the following words at the 2008 Democratic National Convention:

“I will never receive the pay I deserve, but there will be a far richer reward if we secure fair pay for our children and grandchildren, so that no one will ever again experience the discrimination that I did. Equal pay for equal work is a fundamental American principle. We need leaders in this country who will fight for it. With all of us working together, we can have the change we need and the opportunity we all deserve.”

The Ledbetter Act helps in the fight for women’s rights, but it also forces people to acknowledge second and third wave feminism, says Nicole Schultz, an assistant professor of communication and journalism at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Schultz believes that the Ledbetter Act is proof that second wave feminism is not in the past. She defines second wave feminism as assuring that women’s work is not exploited no matter where they are working, whether in an office setting or in the household, and that their work is valued on the same level as a man’s work.

Discrimination in the work environment has remained the elephant in the room for many, many years and was clearly not solved with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which called for employers to pay equal amounts to women as they would men. This act includes a few exceptions, which include, according to the act, a seniority system, a merit system and a system that measures the quality and quantity of production.

Although at times these “exceptions” may be relevant in work place situations, it seems that these “exceptions” have become an excuse to pay women less. However, this act did make unequal pay for equal work illegal, which served as a basis in the Lilly Ledbetter Act.

Unequal pay for equal work affected UW-Eau Claire Alumni Shannon Haydin, whose bachelor’s degree in geography and master’s degree served better as artwork on the wall than as a measure of respect when she got a job as planning director in a small urban county east of Eau Claire in the August of 2002.

Haydin quickly found out she was making about $10,000 less a year than the previous director, but was able to negotiate about $7,000 more a year. She was told she had less experience, although this statement was false; both had a master’s degree and experience in fields related to the position. After Haydin left the job in 2008, the man they hired to fill her position was offered $10,000 more a year than her starting wage.
While conversing with Haydin, she mentioned the fact that we as a society have for the most part accepted the inequalities in pay. Why aren’t more women enraged at the very notion that their work is thought to deserve less compensation? Why aren’t we making a bigger splash and claiming what is rightfully ours? Why are we so content with unequal pay? Have we all gone mad?

It is not just women that should be angry, but everyone should be outraged by this notion; Schultz pointed out that lower pay affects the maintenance of households which, in turn, is bad for the economy. President Obama noted that although gender wage discrimination does not affect him directly, it will affect his daughters, it affects his wife and it affects every woman and everyone who has a woman in their life, whether they are children, wife or family member.

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, women made 77.8 cents to every dollar men made in 2007. The gender wage gap is certainly not a myth as some have proclaimed; some have also stated the gap is a myth because otherwise only women would get employed. Schultz explains that not every business takes part in wage discrimination and that 77 cents to every dollar is an average. Schultz also says that not every business is about dollars and cents; when you own a business that values masculine skills, not men necessarily, but masculine types of skills, then money has little to do with the labor.
An objection to the Lilly Ledbetter Act is that by allowing women to sue in order to receive the wages they lost while working, we are essentially giving lawyers a bonus — because going in to the records of companies’ payroll files and determining the pay lost, as far as when and where it happened will take time and therefore money. There is also the possibility that there could be more lawsuits that could be filed if the correct documents cannot be found or have since been lost.

Photo by Ron Edmonds/AP

The bottom line is that it does not matter if you cannot find the documents, unequal pay is illegal, and has been illegal for quite some time, Schultz says. If you can’t find the documents of your illegal activity it should not be the woman’s fault, it’s your business and you will have to pay for discrimination. The legislation is there to work for the people, Schultz said.

Equal pay for equal work is a simple idea, yet for some reason packs a punch. But really, why is it so difficult to understand this concept? Consistently people are being discriminated against in the work place; if only we could all be white men or if only we could all follow one religion, if only we could all be healthy, then the world would be a pleasant mixture of peaches and cream.

As cases of unequal pay for equal work begin to come forward in the next few years, the hope is that these cases will set an example that companies will get punished if they knowingly break the law. By setting an example, hopefully employers that have played the discrimination game will begin to change their ways.

Haydin told me about a conversation she had with her eight-year-old daughter the previous night. Her daughter pointed out that after working all day her mom still tends to most of the household duties while her dad lies on the couch. Haydin proceeded to tell her that on top of all the work women do in their day-to-day lives, they are still paid less than men for doing the same exact job, which was a concept that this young girl could not understand. But really, do you?

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