The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: gender discrimination
President To Advance Pay Equity Through Executive Orders

President To Advance Pay Equity Through Executive Orders

Advancing the fight for pay equity, President Barack Obama will sign two executive orders this week meant to close the persistent wage gap between women and men.

The first measure would prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their salaries with each other. The executive action would protect employees – usually women – who discover and expose discriminatory pay policies or wages.

The second will require the Secretary of Labor to collect data on federal contractors’ workers’ compensation, which would be organized by race and sex.

Through the two orders, the president hopes to remedy the wage discrimination that often puts women at a disadvantage in the workforce, by encouraging salary transparency by federal contractors and making sure that violations and discrimination are more easily revealed.

Both of these orders come just days before what is expected to be an unsuccessful Senate vote on legislation aimed at closing the gender pay gap.

The timing is designed to put congressional Republicans on the defensive, especially because most on the right refuse to support the latest pay equity bill being debated in Congress, The Paycheck Fairness Act.

In recent days, several conservative politicians have spoken out against the bill, citing an array of reasons why the legislation would be ineffective or counterproductive. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) fears that The Paycheck Fairness Act, meant to ensure equal pay for both genders, will actually expose men to unequal pay. Meanwhile, Texas governor Rick Perry (R) accused Democrats of debating “nonsense” by even tackling the issue.

And yet nearly all Republicans who oppose legislation similar to the orders being signed by the president maintain that they do support equal pay for men and women.

“I will vote the same I did a year ago, which is no,” said conservative senator Kelly Ayotte (NH).

Then, she added: “And I think it’s self-evident I am for women being paid the same for the same job as men.”

According to supposedly equality-backing Republicans, the current Paycheck Fairness Act is just a political ploy by Democrats. Even so, the GOP has not introduced an alternative plan.

This is where the president’s orders come in. They would, however, only pertain to federal contractors, not the general workforce.

Still, the measures represent the latest evidence that President Obama will use all available options to shape economic policy without a reticent Congress. They also promote a key issue for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, which should fire up the party’s base)—the nation’s largest labor federation, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), has already come out in support of the president’s executive orders and urged even stronger action.

With Tuesday, April 8 marking Equal Pay Day, The Hill reports that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will launch its own media campaign to bring attention to the issue of wage inequality among the genders. Specifically, the “GOP Pay Gap” campaign will target the GOP’s “longstanding baseless opposition to common-sense measures that would end gender-based pay discrimination,” says DSCC spokeswoman Regan Page. The DSCC will be further backed by the Democratic National Committee, which is also planning an ad campaign in support of pay equity.

Beyond the issue’s larger economic implications, it represents a social and political reality that Republicans have failed to address. The Republican Party’s lack of uniformity on the issue – and its lack of support for the current Paycheck Fairness Act bill in the Senate – make Republicans vulnerable to accusations that they are fighting a “war on women.” Considering that Independents and even Republican women increasingly support legislative efforts to close the gender pay gap, continued opposition could risk driving even more women away from the party.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Walmart, Throws Women Under The Bus

The Supreme Court continued its recent streak of favoring corporations over individuals and workers today, though this time the margin was anything but narrow:

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out the largest employment discrimination case in the nation’s history. The suit, against Wal-Mart Stores, had sought to consolidate the claims of as many as 1.5 million women on the theory that the company had discriminated against them in pay and promotion decisions.

The lawsuit sought back pay that could have amounted to billions of dollars. But the Supreme Court, in a decision that was unanimous on this point, said the plaintiffs’ lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims.

The court did not decide whether Wal-Mart had in fact discriminated against the women, only that they could not proceed as a class. The court’s decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of other class-action suits, including ones asserting antitrust, securities and product liability violations.

Unlike Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that invalidated most of the McCain-Feingold finance rules and allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on independent political activity, this is unlikely to become a major progressive rallying cry, and almost certainly won’t earn mention at the president’s State of the Union speech in January (as Citizens United did last year). But to the extent that women voters are key to Obama’s base–and that Walmart is anathema to the left–we shouldn’t be surprised if this one furthers the angst about corporate dominance in an era of conservative jurisprudence. [The New York Times]