Hate the Pay Gap? Take the App Challenge
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If you’re frustrated about the wage gap that persists between male and female workers, you can channel your energy into a new contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and President Obama’s National Equal Pay Task Force.
The Equal Pay App Challenge invites the public to create innovative software applications that use the department’s data to educate users about the pay gap, and provide tools to combat it.
Women earn about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men doing comparable work—and the gap is wider for Latinas and African American women. Over a lifetime, the pay gap results in lost wages, reduced pensions and diminished Social Security benefits.
Of course, unionized women do better than their unrepresented sisters, thanks to the power of collective bargaining. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that union women earn nearly 34 percent more than nonunion women.
Software apps that “improve the accessibility of pay data broken down by gender, race and ethnicity, and provide coaching on early career pay, pay negotiation or career mentorship” are among the goals of the challenge. March 31 is the deadline and prizes will be awarded around Equal Pay Day in April. Find development tools here.
Supreme Court Backs Wal-Mart in Pay Discrimination Case
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that as many as 1.6 million women who are current or former Wal-Mart employees cannot sue Wal-Mart for pay discrimination in a class-action suit. A lower court had ruled that the women could join together in a class action.
But the court did not rule on the women’s claims of systematic and company-wide pay and promotion discrimination.
Ten years ago, a group of women who worked at Wal-Mart stores, led by Betty Dukes, filed a lawsuit alleging the corporation engaged in company-wide gender discrimination by paying women less than men, promoting fewer women to management positions and promoting male employees more quickly.
United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) President Joe Hansen called the decision “deeply disturbing.” The UFCW has been a longtime supporter of Wal-Mart workers’ fight for justice.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says working people are disappointed by today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of Wal-Mart.
Our courts should be available to working men and women who seek to challenge discriminatory promotion and pay practices by their employers. Today’s decision continues a disturbing trend of closing the courthouse doors to workers seeking redress against corporations.
The ruling means the already uphill battle for women to fight pay discrimination will get even worse. John Nichols at The Nation writes that the ruling is “a big win for Wal-Mart, and for other large firms that may not choose to treat employees fairly.” The court ruled on the grounds that
the class-action status that could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of current and former female workers was too large.
Equal Pay Day: Women Still Paid Less than Men
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Today is Equal Pay Day—the date that symbolizes how far into 2011 women must work to earn what men earned in 2010.
Nearly 50 years after enactment of the Equal Pay Act, working women in the United States are paid an average of 80 cents for every dollar paid to men. The pay gap is even larger for women of color, with black women earning about 70 cents, and Latinas about 60 cents, of every dollar paid to all men.
U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a statement marking Equal Pay Day:
When women start at a disadvantage, they stay at a disadvantage. Every time a woman starts a new job or tries to negotiate for a pay raise, she is starting from a lower base salary. So, the pay gap grows wider and wider over time.
The Labor Department reports the pay gap for the average, full-time working woman means she gets $150 less in her weekly paycheck. If she works all year, that’s $8,000 less at the end of the year and about $380,000 over a lifetime.
Call Senate Now for Paycheck Fairness
Before Congress adjourns to go home for the 2010 elections, the Senate needs to step up and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182) to help close the wage gap between women and men. The House passed the bill last year, but it has been bottled up in the Senate by Republican obstructionists. The Paycheck Fairness Act is likely to come up for a vote in the Senate before Oct. 1. (Call 1-877-667-6650 toll free, and tell your senators it’s time to do the right thing and pass Paycheck Fairness for women and their families. Ask them to pass the Paycheck Fairness Ac t this session with no amendments)
In a live webcast this morning, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the legislation will benefit everyone, not just women workers.
It’s about our families. There are many women who lead and are the breadwinners for their family. A woman’s earnings affect her family’s ability to afford healthy food, rent and a college education for her children. Equal pay is not only a sound policy, but it is the right thing to do.
Tell Senate It’s Time to Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act—Now!
Time is running out for the Senate to follow the lead of the House of Representatives and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182) to help close the wage gap between women and men. The Senate is back to work but could be gone for the fall elections in three weeks.
Call your senators today toll free at 1-877-667-6650 and urge them to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act before the end of September. Even if your senators are co-sponsors, they need to hear from you today, so the bill can be put on the Senate’s to-do list before adjournment.
The bill would deter wage discrimination by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages to co-workers.
Chamber of Commerce: No Equal Pay for Women
Not only does achievement of such ‘equality’ require the state to treat people unequally, obsession with income equality also reflects a Scrooge-like fetish for money.
Obama Tells Senate: Mind the Gap, Pass Paycheck Fairness Act
President Obama today called on the U.S. Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to close the pay gap that leaves women earning only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. He says the Paycheck Fairness Act is a
common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve….Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.
47 Years After Equal Pay Act, Women Still Paid Less Than Men
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Forty-seven years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women still are not being paid the same as men for equivalent work. On average, women earn about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. For women of color, African American women and Latinas, the gap is even wider. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wages of full-time, year-round workers in 2008 stood at $35,745 for women and $46,367 for men. That’s $10,622 less per year for women and their families in a difficult economy.
The U.S. Senate is considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give employees the tools they need to close the wage gap between men and women and provide the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities. The U.S. House passed the bill last year. The advocacy group MomsRising has an action here to urge your senator to close the wage gap and back the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Work. Family. Conflict. Resolution?
The realities of our workplaces have not changed to meet the new realities of our economy and society, says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. Employers and political leaders must create new policies that help working families deal with their basic needs of feeding their families, caring for their elderly parents, paying the mortgage.
Speaking this afternoon to a conference on the “Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict,” sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Holt Baker said, “Our families are trying to live in two different worlds at the same time—and it is just not working.”
Most people—men and women, across race and class—agree that the changing status of women is a good thing, now that we are half the workforce and have the opportunity and the weight of being breadwinners. But we also agree that something’s got to give.
The conflict between work and family is no longer between men and women, Holt Baker said. “It’s between families and the systems that are not meeting our needs.” Read the rest of this entry »
Workplaces Must Adapt to Greater Role of Women In Workforce
A new Center for American Progress (CAP) report released in time for International Women’s Day today offers practical solutions to help America’s workers and families meet the dual demands of work and family. (Read the full report here.)
The report, “Our Working Nation: How Working Women Are Reshaping America’s Families and Economy and What It Means for Policymakers,” calls for:
- Updating basic labor standards to recognize that most workers also have family responsibilities and need predictable and flexible workplace schedules,access to paid family and medical leave the right to paid sick days.* Improving basic fairness in our workplace by ending discrimination against all workers, including pregnant women and caregivers.
- Providing direct support to working families with child care and elder care needs.
- Improving knowledge about family-responsive workplace policies by collecting national data on work-life policies offered by employers and analyzing the effectiveness of existing state and local policies.
