Paycheck Fairness Act Case Study

 “Women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn, with women of color at an even greater disadvantage with 64 cents on the dollar for African American women and 56 cents for Hispanic women.” — White House Statement of Administration Policy on Paycheck Fairness Act, June 4. [2]

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 Paycheck Fairness Act can aid an organization in laying the foundation to value employees equally and add a level of transparency without retaliation.

It has been more than fifty years since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was enacted, yet gender pay gap still exists today. According to National Women’s Law Center, women are paid only 80 cent for every dollar their male counterpart are paid. According to American Association of University Women, the total estimated loss of earnings for women compared to men over the course of 45 years are $700,000 for a high school graduate, $1.2 million for a college graduate, and $2 million for a professional school graduate. Although there are many factors that are responsible for gender pay gap, 40% of the pay gap is due to discrimination according to a report by the Joint Economic Committee Democratic Staff. By discriminating women, we, as a society, are telling

Discrimination in the United States, has been, and continues to be a very large problem in our country. Although, the country has continued to make outstanding strides on getting rid of discrimination in this country as a whole, it tends to stick around. One of the largest controversies in the workforce today, is that women are continuing to be discriminated against by receiving less pay than males. This problem of women receiving less pay than males in the workforce is known as the Gender Wage Gap.

The road a bill takes to becoming a law is a long and tedious process. First, the proposed bill goes through the House of representatives. Once the bill has been approved by the House, it is then begins its journey through the Senate. After the bill has been endorsed by the Senate, the houses of congress then meet in conference committees to prepare the bill to be sent to the White House. To summarize, the path the bill takes to become a law is a fairly complex impediment.

The gender pay gap in the United States has been a tensely debated topic since the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Although the Equal Pay Act requires equal pay for men and women, the issue of the gender pay gap has been a heightened issue as time has progressed. Phyllis Schlafly, Mark J. Perry, Anita Little and Sheryl Sandberg each address the gender pay gap in dynamically different ways. Phyllis Schlafly and Mark J. Perry firmly believe that the gender pay gap is entirely created by life choices that women make. While Anita Little and Sheryl Sandberg argue that the pay gap is caused by external forces. Each author addresses: creation of the wage gap, the severity of the wage gap and the viability of a solution.

In 1963, the Equal Pay Act was passed by Congress; it required that men and women at the same workplace be paid the same amount of money for equal work (EEOC). However, this law was not enforced whatsoever and fifty-five years later little to no change has been seen. Researchers say that if nothing is done by the government soon, the United States will not reach pay equity until 2059 (WeForum). The pay gap narrowed slightly in the 1980s, but since then the average pay gap country-wide has remained around 80 cents to a dollar. In Columbus, Ohio, where women make up more than 50% of the population, there is an even lower gap at 78 cents to a dollar for white women, 64 cents to a dollar for African American women, and 61 cents to a dollar for Latinas. If these discrepancies did not exist then women who work full-time, year-round jobs being paid the same amount of money as men for the same job with the same qualifications then they would be able to buy eighty more weeks of food (one and a half years’ worth), pay for nine more months of mortgage/utility payments, and for more than fourteen additional months of rent (National Partnership). This is why the Columbus City Council should pass a law/ordinance that makes it illegal in Columbus, Ohio for companies and businesses to pay their employees a different salary for jobs that require equal qualifications of men and women of all

A lot of organization, collaboration, and time is needed for success in passing a bill. At the end of the process a committee may either approve a bill, revise or rewrite it, allow the House to consider it while suggesting it be rejected, or decide to take no further action. Only 15% of proposed bills even make it to the House and Senate to be considered (SOURCE).

As she was reading the organizations website she discovered that The Equal Pay Act was intended to ensure the American citizens rights in obtaining equal pay and other employment related benefits for equal work. Sue thought to herself that this law was proving an injustice at her work place. The Equal Pay Act is an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and requires full wages and other benefits for equal skill and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions. The law only requires the jobs to be substantially equal and thus, employers must be particularly aware of the issue of comparable work and pay. While Sue is

Another example of how bills and laws work is shown with the Student Loan Fairness Act of 2013(H.R. 1330). Authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and sponsored by Representative Karen Bass (CA-37), if this bill is signed into a law it would dramatically lower the interest rates on federal student loans (Kingkade, 2013). Warren’s plan is to have the percentage rate on government issued student loans lower from 6.8 percent to .75 percent (Kingkade, 2013). When looking at the details of H.R. 1330, you can see the timeline of events that has happened since the bill was introduced in 2013. The details show that Hon. Karen Bass introduced the bill to the House Education and the Workforce, House Financial Services, House Ways and Means, and then the bill was referred to the subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training. (Committee Action, Schwalbe, 2014). As of April 2013, the bill has gained up to 51 different cosponsors however it is still under review by committee and awaiting further action or until the committees are ready to send it to the floor for debate. If this bill did become a law it would help college students with the debt they incur while obtaining higher education. Some people say that bills take too long to pass and looking at H.R. 1330 one can see why most Americans feel this way. (No action since April 2013) The wait time and the

The road a bill takes to becoming a law is a long and tedious process. First, the proposed bill goes through the House of representatives. Once the bill has been approved by the House, it is then begins its journey through the Senate. After the bill has been endorsed by the Senate, the houses of congress then meet in conference committees to prepare the bill to be sent to the White House. To summarize, the path the bill takes to become a law is a fairly complex impediment.

An earnings or wage gap is a difference in rates of payment between men and women and is expressed by a percentage that is calculated by dividing the median of yearly earnings men and women make. One of the most unjust things is the seventy-seven cent claim. The seventy-seven cent claim is that for every seventy-seven cents a female makes, a male makes a dollar. Lastly seen in recorded data of 2014, "women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 79 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 21 percent" Hill, C. (n.d.). I believe it is an outrage to know that people aren't being payed equally due to

Throughout history, discrimination of all forms has been a constant issue. These forms of discrimination include race, gender, religion, beliefs, appearance or anything else that make a person different from the next person. One major discrimination issue that is constantly being dealt with in the world takes place in the work place, equal pay. Women, who work equally hard and are equally trained and qualified as men, are not paid equally to men. This has been an ongoing problem for decades. Studies have proven that African-American women and Latina women make less than 64 cents to every dollar of their male counterparts. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which became a law in 1963, requires that men and women who do the same job in the same organization should receive the same pay. Many exceptions to the Equal Pay Act have been made though. Some of these exceptions include having seniority, having greater a quality or quantity of production, different factors such as paying extra compensation to overnight workers or less compensation to part-time and temporary workers, and having a better or different job.

Imagine what an extra 20%, or more, in your paycheck could do for you. Maybe it would be the difference between just scraping by and having a little discretionary income. Now, imagine being paid based on your own merit, and not some sliding scale which has historically favored men as the breadwinners of the family. Unfortunately, for most women, equal pay is still a dream. Today, as throughout history, there exists a gender pay gap where women are paid $0.79 to every dollar a man makes. Minority women make even less. Women, of course, have always known this gap exists, but they have had little power to change it.