Fair Pay petition

[vettecat]

Received this via e-mail and thought it would be of general interest...

Just in time for Mother's Day, Senator John McCain opposed the Fair Pay Act — a bill that would help guarantee women equal pay for equal work. The bill simply would have restored critical anti-discrimination rules that the Supreme Court struck down in a recent decision, and failed by just three votes.

Adding insult to injury, McCain said that the solution to employment discrimination was for women to get more "education and training." Maybe that made some sense in his day, but today with women outnumbering men on college campuses, it makes none. Study after study has shown that women are paid less than men for the same work, even when they have the same education and training. Senator McCain and his Republican allies have chosen to stand in the way of enforcement of a law that's been on the books protecting women for 40 years.

Call on Senator McCain and Congress to pass the Fair Pay Act now.

Our friends at MomsRising will deliver this petition to Senator McCain with the media in tow, to make sure our message gets out. And if you're as incensed as we are by McCain's statement that women are somehow poorly educated and trained, you can do one more thing: Submit your resume when you sign the letter and we'll deliver that too, so Senator McCain can see for himself that women are actually quite educated nowadays.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

oh no he didn't. (said in tones of fury, not at *all* an expression of disbelief.)

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Submit your resume when you sign the letter and we'll deliver that too, so Senator McCain can see for himself that women are actually quite educated nowadays.

First of all, he'll probably just blame my being a stayhome mom for my lack of equal pay.

Then, he'll blame moms who don't stay home for the poor morals of the country, or something similar.

As Seth has quoted someone I'm too lazy to look up: "dress for success: wear a white penis."

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Besides, with the recent Supreme Court ruling, perhaps women don't have equal pay because they didn't make sure they learned about it within 6 months of the initial discrimination, so that they could sue.

Though I assume the law they're talking about is the one that's supposed to remove the effect of the decision.

[dda.livejournal.com]

I don't know the details of the case but, in general, the main purpose of the Supreme Court is to decide if a law contradicts some aspect of the Constitution. If they say it does (and remember, I don't know the details of whatever case is in question here), then Congress passing another law will only cause the new law to be disqualified as well (and probably sooner since people will just use the previous decision as a precedent).

Adding insult to injury, McCain said that the solution to employment discrimination was for women to get more "education and training." Maybe that made some sense in his day, but today with women outnumbering men on college campuses, it makes none.

And this discrepancy doesn't bother you at all?

[noeltheone.livejournal.com]

...in general, the main purpose of the Supreme Court is to decide if a law contradicts some aspect of the Constitution.

That's usually true, but not in this case, which was about a statute, not a Constitutional provision.

The case in question was one in which a woman sued her employer of 19 years, Goodyear Tire, for discrimination after discovering that she had been underpaid relative to her coworkers for much of that time. Despite having had no way to know about the discrimination until she discovered it, the case was eventually thrown out by the Supreme Court.

The plaintiff argued that since the discrimination was ongoing, the Statute of Limitations should run from the last paycheck she received. Goodyear argued that it should run from when she claims the discrimination started, which would mean she would have had to file the case 6 months after she was hired, when she had no way to know that she was being discriminated against.

Despite the absurdity of reading the Statute this way (effectively hamstringing people from getting redress under the statute), the Court (in a 5-4 decision) threw out the case saying that since the statute of limitations was in their eyes ambiguous, it should be read to apply here. This despite ample indications that Congress had no such intentions when they passed the law. (So much for Scalia's vaunted strict constructionism.)

Since the case was only the Court's interpretation of a statute, Congress can fix the law by clarifying that the intent of the Statute of Limitations is that it should not apply to cases of ongoing discrimination, which a bill currently before Congress would do.

[dda.livejournal.com]

Since the case was only the Court's interpretation of a statute, Congress can fix the law by clarifying that the intent of the Statute of Limitations is that it should not apply to cases of ongoing discrimination, which a bill currently before Congress would do.

Ah, gotcha. As I said, I didn't know the details and that makes sense as something Congress could do.