WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Elaine Luria (VA-02) today joined a majority of the House in voting to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that promotes equity in America, closes unfair loopholes, and provides effective remedies for women who are not getting equal pay for equal work.
An original cosponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act, Congresswoman Luria cheered the bill’s House passage and urged the Senate to follow suit.
“Nearly two decades into the 21st century, it’s long past time that our daughters are paid the same way we pay our sons,” Congresswoman Luria said. “Today the House took a big step in the right direction, and I was proud to help lead that effort. I hope the Senate will step up for women in America.”
According to the National Women’s Law Center, women in Virginia typically make $0.79 for every dollar paid to men. The national average is $0.80.
America will be marking Equal Pay Day next week – Tuesday, April 2. Equal Pay Day symbolizes when, three months into the year, women’s wages catch up to what men were paid in the previous year.
Among its key provisions, the Paycheck Fairness Act:
- Requires employers to prove that pay disparities exist for legitimate, job-related reasons. In doing so, it ensures that employers who try to justify paying a man more than a woman for the same job must show the disparity is not sex-based, but job-related and necessary.
- Bans retaliation against workers who voluntarily discuss or disclose their wages.
- Ensures women can receive the same robust remedies for sex-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subjected to discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
- Removes obstacles in the Equal Pay Act to facilitate a wronged worker’s participation in class-action lawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination.
- Makes improvements in the Department of Labor’s tools for enforcing the Equal Pay Act.
Congresswoman Elaine Luria represents Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. She serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where she is the Vice Chair of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, where she serves asChair of the Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee.
Jack Trump says
March 31, 2019 at 12:27 pmHERE HERE ! What fair minded individual wouldn’t support that idea ? It’s sad that someone had to write this into law.
Ray Otton says
March 31, 2019 at 4:21 pmThe Paycheck Fairness Act is not about equal pay for equal work. That’s already the law of the land under both the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Since pay discrimination is already illegal, the Paycheck Fairness Act is actually about rigid pay scales, hiring discrimination, lower wages, lower productivity, increased business and consumer costs and, of course, lawyers and judges second-guessing employers’ evaluations.( If you’re an employer, won’t THAT be fun?)
That ‘s a lot of consequences in the name of reducing the so-called “pay gap” between men and women. A pay gap that in today’s world is negligible.
You see, the “pay gap” that some folks go on about in meant to enhance the victim mentality and thus gather votes.
It is an apples-to-oranges comparison presented as if women make about 20 cents less on the dollar than men. It completely ignores factors that employers consider when setting pay, such as occupation, education, experience and hours.
When such measurable factors are taken into account, the “gap” all but disappears. The small differences that remains aren’t the result of discrimination. Harder-to-measure factors such as differences in workplace flexibility and benefits account for most of the remaining gap.
Those harder-to-measure factors would be the first to go under the Paycheck Fairness Act. Losing the option of flexible work schedules, teleworking and family-friendly benefits would disproportionately hurt working mothers, who place a higher value on those factors.
The aim of proponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act are pay scales similar to those established for the federal workforce or in union contracts.
Pay scales are not amenable to today’s labor market. Unlike a 1950 assembly line where workers clocked in from 9 to 5 and everyone produced the same number of products a day, few jobs today have exactly equal functions or outputs.
Moreover, fixed-pay regimes don’t let employers offer flexibility or rewards for extra effort. Instead, they create less productive and frustrating work environments.
The federal pay system is a perfect example of the problem. It is based almost entirely on title and tenure.
The last Federal Employee survey showed that only one in four non-supervisory employees believed that pay raises depended on how well people do their jobs.
That’s a problem for workers who reap little benefit for excelling in their work and it’s terrible for overall productivity and workers’ wages. It’s also a problem for the rest of us when we have to deal with the government in any capacity.
In addition, survey after survey indicates that most workers just want to be paid based on the work they perform. The best way to achieve that is to let workers negotiate directly with their employers instead of having the government, lawyers and judges scrutinize and second-guess the agreements that employers and workers make with each other.
The whole thing reminds me of the old saying:
What are the most terrifying words an American ever hears?
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Paul Plante says
March 31, 2019 at 8:45 pmAn excellent analysis!