Fair Pay Act Summary

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was influential in creating a progressive environment which would contribute to creating a fairer world for all. The Act was instrumental in changing the thought process of Americans at the time, and is responsible for supporting equal pay in the workplace. Gender equality pay is an issue people have been fighting over for years, but when the Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed, it certainly aided in the fight for equality for all. (Salem Press Encyclopedia)

I would look to see what wage increases were done in the history of each employee; I would do this to see if all employees in each department were equally paid within the guidelines of the Equal Pay Act “the EPA requires employers to pay men and women equally for performing the same work” (Thorne, Ferrell, & Ferrell, 2011). I would then see when the last evaluation was done on each employee; I would check to see if any pay increases were done; I would inspect this to be sure each employee was fairly evaluated based on their job responsibilities. To get everyone in compliance, I would also compare the compensation of other firms to ours to be sure we are being fair to our employees.

Women’s Civil Rights has always been an issue around the world. During World War II, women began working while the men were away at war. Once the men came back, the pay wage began between men and women. According to researchers, Beth Rowen and Borgna Brunner, between 1950 and 1960, women who had worked full-time jobs only earned around 60 cents to every dollar that their male counterparts earned. It was not until June 10, 1963 that the Equal Pay Act was passed by President Kennedy making it illegal for employers to pay women less than men in the same job title. In order to further progress of pay equity, Rosa Cho from Re:Gender.org, also found that President Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Act to prohibit

An important federal employment law that all employees and employers should be aware of is the Equal Pay Act of 1963. As conversed in week nine of class discussion and video lecture, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 ends wage disparity based on sex. The main goal of this act was to ban discrimination in wages, benefits, and pensions based the gender of an employee in any place of employment. Women traditionally earned less than men for doing similar work. The United States has had a long history of knowledge of unequal pay between men and women, but it was not until around World War II that the problem arose and women started fighting for their rights on this issue. Women have tried passing several bills to help close this pay gap throughout the 1950’s, but ended up in failure.

The Equal Pay Act set in the United States in 1963 is a labor law removes the wage inequality between men and women. This was a law that was specifically designed so that everyone is required to be paid the same amount. If a man and a woman are both working the same job title in the same work place there should not be any difference in the amount of pay received. The creation of this law was much more important than many people realized, because women were completing the same jobs but offered less money because of their gender and not quality of their work.The sole purpose of the equal pay is give women the same ability to make a living as a male, which closes the gender pay gap and keeps women for being paid 78 cents on a dollar. This pay act helps hold the employer accountable for making sure no one is not being compensated for things in their job description. In this paper I will speaking about The EEOC Sues Checkers and the Phillips V. Marietta Corp which are two specific cases that shows how people have been discriminated against because of their gender, this highlights the importance of The Equal Pay Act and what it actually stands for.

Women have made significant strides in society, proving themselves to be as capable as men in the workforce. However, while women are making equal contributions, men and women are not earning equal wages. Even though the Equal Pay Act was established in 1963, women continue to earn lower wages than men over half a century later. This inequality not only affects women as individuals but has a detrimental effect on the national economy. The gender wage gap in the United States should end because it is unjust; correcting it would have social and economic benefits for the U.S.

This is topic is relevant to all of us because on June 10, 1963, Present John Kennedy signed historic, landmark legislation to guarantee equal pay for women and men who held the same job. The equal pay act changed the legal landscape for working women and laid a firm foundation for the beginning of their movement into the paid labor force. At the signing ceremony for the equal pay act on June 10, 1963, special recognition was given to women leader. But despite this whole ordeal; today in 2017 we still face this same unequal pay

Being an interagency task force, the Equal Pay Task Force has worked closely together to build a strong foundation in order to ensure long-term success in ending pay discrimination. In the spring of 2010 the EEOC and the DOJ created a “pilot project” in which they efficiently investigated and consulted over 125 cases of pay discrimination (pg7). This interagency cooperation has trained over 2000 enforcement personnel, as well as providing online training to the various departments on how to address and handle pay discrimination more effectively. To ensure future success this task force has also worked with academic experts to use the best means of data gathering, doing so will give the Task Force transparent information to investigate future cases (pg8).

One problem that Americans are facing is the inequality between men and women, whether it is in everyday life or in a professional atmosphere. One step that has been taken toward equality was introduced with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, signed by President John F. Kennedy. This law was the first affecting the amount of job opportunities available for women and allowing them to work in traditionally male dominated fields. On the outside, this would sound like a solution where nothing could possibly go wrong, but it is not.

Wage discrimination is embedded in our legal system. The ongoing battle for equal pay for women dates back to the Civil War. Throughout history, men seemed as the ideal-type of employers. Men were primary the breadwinners, and women who worked at the time only pinch in money oppose to having a stable salary equivalent to their male counterparts. The job roles such as nurses, teacher, and retail sales clerk became a “traditional female” occupations. In “Here’s the History of the Battle for Equal Pay for American Women,” Charlotte Alter points out a letter sent to the editor of the New York Times on February 1869. In this letter, the writer questioned why female government officials did not have similar pay to their male colleagues: ‘Very few persons deny the justice of the principle that equal work should command equal pay without regard to the sex of the laborer.’ Even in the late 19th century in which men had far more opportunities than women, people question the inequality in regards of the workplace. The

Women are continually being overlooked for promotions and additional projects in the workplace for the same reasons. Employers assume that women with families have other obligations, so they won’t consider those women for additional responsibility. Because of this, women aren’t even given the opportunity of job advancement and the opportunity to compete with men in the workplace.

Winifred Stanley (R-NY) proposed a bill in 1944 to amend the National Labor Relations Act with no success. Then in 1950, Rep. Katharine St. George (R-NY) attempted to pass the Equal Rights Amendment though again, with no success. Notably, Katharine St. George is credited with coining the phrase “equal pay for equal work” (Cho 2013). During the second wave of feminism which began in the early 1960’s and lasted through 1990’s, emphasis was focused on passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights and social equality (Rampton 2015). Subsequently, in 1963 President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law. Although momentum stalled between signage of the EPA and the early decade of the millennium and we have yet to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, this could change if Hilary Clinton is elected President of the United States and continues the work that Obama started. President Obama has been committed to equal rights from the beginning of his presidency; in fact, the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pair Act of 2009. This act is an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and changed the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay claim for pay discrimination. Prior to this law, anyone claiming discrimination was required to file within 180 days of the alleged offense, the alleged offense was formerly the first paycheck received where discrimination was claimed. Clearly this

Starting on March 25, 2015 in the 144th Congress, the Paycheck Fairness Act was first introduced into the legislative process to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide a more effective remedy to the victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex and other purposes. This bill is introduced because for every full-time women worker she will get only 78 cents for every dollar a man makes but women have been entering the workforce for the past 50 years and need equal pay despite their gender. Even with the Equal Pay Act in 1963 being passed, women still face the continuous impact of lower pay than men for an equal amount of work and this exists in both private and government sectors and if these pay differences

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was the first federal anti-discrimination law that addresses wage differences based on gender (SHRM, nd). Generally speaking, there should be no unequal wages paid to women and men who do jobs that require the same skills. Consequently, why is this still a big topic, even in the 21st century? The truth is, salary data is still a topic not openly discussed and women and minorities are not aware of the wage gap. Although, women make up half of the workforce, they are still underpaid when compared with male workers. Today, the workforce has changed drastically, but our labor laws have not kept up with the trend. As I researched the topic for this assignment, I have identified several key points that I would use to evaluate

Despite the fact that the Equal Pay Act has been law since 1963, many problems inevitably arise in the administration of equal pay laws (Fisher). It has been estimated that at this current slow rate of progression in closing the gender pay gap it will be 2068 by the time men and women’s wages are equalized. It is clear that the business case, as well as the legislative case, has a significant role to play (Commission Policy Report).