Women’s fight for equal pay still has a long way to go. According to the 2010 census, on average women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same work. Black women earn 69 cents, and Latinas 60 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work.
In 1868, the National Labor Union took up the call for equal pay and in 1872, Congress passed a law that gave female federal employees equal pay to men. It was not until 1963 that the Equal Pay Act was passed as part of a Democratic Party initiative to rally support for their re-election. The following year, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act expanded the protection of women from employment discrimination.
The Equal Pay Act states that there should be equal pay for women and men for equal work in the workplace. The act, however, puts the burden of proof on the woman who must prove that different wages are paid to employees of the opposite sex. She must also have the financial ability to take her employer to court in order to win her case.
Ledbetter Act and its limitations
In January 2009, the first piece of legislation Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. It amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and removed the 180-day statute of limitations to file an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination. The law resets the statute of limitations with every new paycheck a woman receives from the employer in question. It is a step forward in that it removes a hurdle for women trying to win back pay.
Today, the Democratic Party is trying to use the Ledbetter Act to present themselves as champions of women’s rights in the workplace. Women’s rights is an issue they periodically pretend to represent in order to reignite this base. Lilly Ledbetter, the former production supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant whose lawsuit prompted the legislation, is personally campaigning for Obama.
The Ledbetter Act does not amend the Equal Pay Act, nor provide for any dramatic steps to close the pay gap between men and women.
It still does not force employers to actually give equal pay. It does not force employers to make their records public and prove that there are always equal wages. It only punishes employers once their unequal pay has been discovered and then the corporations’ team of lawyers have been defeated in court.
The Ledbetter Act simply ensures that unequal pay stays an individual problem rather than a social and economic one.
Discrimination is a social problem, not an individual one
This is the norm under capitalism, a system that gives a small class of people the exclusive property right over who they hire, how much they pay, and the right to keep their economic decisions entirely private and unaccountable.
The Democrats will tinker with this system around the edges, but as a capitalist party stand in defense of these core principles.
These economic rules are further protected in the legal system, as the Supreme Court showed in last year’s ruling, throwing out the class-action lawsuit for 1.5 million Walmart women employees alleging gender discrimination. To the Supreme Court, the problem was that the lawsuit addressed “millions of employment decisions,” which should not be tied together.
So how can women finally break through the pay gap? Women must fight collectively in the streets and at the workplace, rather than fighting alone in the courtroom.
Male workers, too, must join this fight as a matter of principle and the collective interest of all workers. The ability of employers to super-exploit the most vulnerable and oppressed in our society drives down wages for everyone and makes it harder to fight back.
