Do You Know How Much Your Co-Workers Make?
by digby
In the midst of a cavalcade of Bushian atrocities, sometimes it’s hard to focus on just what a horrible legacy this administration has left on the federal courts. And that is going to be a living legacy — Roberts, Alito and Thomas aren’t even 60. They’ll be with us for decades, handing down decisions like the Ledbetter Case, which made it nearly impossible to prove job discrimination.
In [this] video …, provided by Alliance for Justice, you can hear Lilly Ledbetter tell you in her own words about the gender pay discrimination she discovered had been going on for 19 years of her employment — and only by an anonymous note. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said from the bench in her blistering oral dissent to the majority’s decision in the Ledbetter case:
In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination. Title VII was meant to govern real-world employment practices, and that world is what the court today ignores.Any woman who has had to fight her way into a position, or prove herself worthy of even being considered as comparable to her male counterparts — because of fears that she might have children, or a family to care for, or “female issues” or whatever other excuse is used to keep her behind even when she was overqualified for the job — any woman who has walked in those shoes can tell you how difficult it can be to rise above in-grown discriminatory attitudes and practices.
This is not feminist special pleading or “whining.” Pay discrimination on the basis of sex exists. And the court used arcane procedural reasoning to make it nearly impossible for anyone to prove it. (Echidne has written a very persuasive three-part series on the gender gap and pay discrimination.)
This Ledbetter decision reversed decades of employment discrimination law, which had evolved to deal practically with the real world instead of the Randian wet-dream that exists in the minds of Federalist Society fantasists. The ACLU says:
…The Ledbetter decision not only reversed years of employment law, it also ignored the realities of a workplace. Often employees don’t know what their co-workers are paid; an expectation that they learn that information within the first 180 days of a pay decision is unreasonable. Unless Congress intervenes, companies will be able to discriminate for years and unjustly profit from paying women, minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities less, as long as it keeps the discrimination secret for a few months.
The congress can fix this, (although I’d bet money that President “She can clean her room” Bush won’t sign it.) Christy hosted Eleanor Holmes Norton earlier this morning to discuss the Ledbetter Fair pay Act, which the House passed quickly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision and which will be voted on in the Senate this week.
As I said, I doubt that Bush will sign it. But if this legislation can be passed, it will be waiting for the new Democratic president next January. It would be a very powerful affirmation of Democratic ideals for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to sign this legislation as one of his or her first acts in office.
Christy helpfully supplies the information if you’d like to take a moment and make some calls:
We’re asking that you contact your Senators and tell them to support the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831). The ACLU has set up an easy contact tool to e-mail your Senators, as has the National Women’s Law Center. Phone numbers for Senators can be found here.
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