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April 28 is Equal Pay Day and workers across the country will commemorate the day by reaffirming their determination to make sure women are paid equally as men for the same work. Equal Pay Day symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year.
Equal Pay Day 2009 comes at an exciting time for those who support equal pay for women. President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law on Jan. 29 and established a White House Council on Women and Girls in March. Yet more than 45 years after the Equal Pay Act was signed, women in the United States still earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns—even with similar education, skills and experience—and African American and Hispanic women earn even less.
Members of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) will commemorate Equal Pay Day with rallies around the country in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Employee Free Choice Act. CLUW is urging all workers to wear red on Equal Pay Day to symbolize how far women and minorities are “in the red” with their pay!
While the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act ensures workers can seek restitution for unequal pay, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which still needs Senate approval, would update the Equal Pay Act by creating stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, empower women to negotiate for equal pay and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. It also would close a significant loophole in the Equal Pay Act to allow for full compensation for sex-based wage discrimination. Learn more about the Paycheck Fairness Act here.
Says CLUW President Marsha Zakowski:
Two bills in Congress would dramatically change the economic lives of women. Union women earn, on the average, 32 percent more than unorganized women. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow women and men workers to form unions at their work places without fear of employer intimidation and unlawful firings. The Paycheck Fairness Act would correct wage discrimination.
You can act now to help women workers gain equal pay. Urge your state’s representatives and senators to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act by calling the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
You also can download a CLUW fact sheet on The Importance of the Employee Free Choice Act to Women and other materials here.
CLUW also is calling all bloggers to sign up at www.cluw.org to Blog for Fair Pay Day 2009.
The need for the Employee Free Choice Act for women is obvious, CLUW says. Union participation benefits society as a whole because union members earn higher wages and have greater access to health care and pensions. The Employee Free Choice Act ensures that employees have the freedom to form unions and take advantage of these benefits.
A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that for the years 2004-2007, union women were much more likely to have health insurance (75.4 percent) and a pension (75.8 percent) than women workers who were not in unions (50.9 percent for health insurance, 43 percent for pensions).
Equal Pay Day was originated by the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) in 1996 as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. (Tuesday is the day on which women’s wages catch up to men’s wages from the previous week.)
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