Tonight's Friday Night Movie is the three hour PBS documentary Women Who Make America. The film goes trhough the history of the woman's movement of the 1960's. Recently we wrote about foreign guest workers enabling sex discrimination in high tech. This film shows just how bad it was for women's equal rights and the battles fought. Yet in 2013, Republicans are yet again blocking a bill to guarantee equal pay for equal work. Women still make 77¢ to a dollar a man makes for the same work.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would close the loopholes that allow pay discrimination to continue nearly 50 years after passage of the Equal Pay Act. The bill would require employers to show pay disparity is truly related to job performance—not gender. It also prohibits employer retaliation for sharing salary information with coworkers. Under current law employers can sue and punish employees for sharing such information, ensuring many women never know they are being paid less than men doing the same job.
Woman Who Make America - Awakening
Woman Who Make America - Changing the World
Woman Who Make America - Charting a New Course
Comments
Nope, this time they're right
Repooflicans are usually wrong, but in this case they're right.
Fact: Any time you set up a law that gives one Victim Class a new way to litigate, the newly litigious Victim Class loses employment. This is what happened with ADA, which was WRONGLY proposed and supported by Repooflicans Bush Sr and BobDole. Employment among disabled people went down after ADA, because employers were hesitant to bring in a source of endless liability. Can't blame them.
Republicans are wrong
I hear ya on fear of lawsuits as a reason not to hire at all, but this is about equal work for equal pay. It's black and white. A woman doing the same job making less money for the same job. Now if that isn't a reason to sue, I don't know what is, but the law wouldn't stop women from being hired, it would just force corporations to pay them the same.
It's a no brainer in 2013 and the examples of pay inequality are across the board. Without it you're making a victim class, a 2nd class, letting businesses get away with paying one worker less than the other due to their sex.
Come on.