Senate Republicans Block Bill on Equal Pay

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, presented a compelling case of pay inequity in a 4/8/2014 Des Moines Register editorial. She said, "Kerri Sleeman is a mechanical engineer who was a design supervisor in Houghton, Michigan. She worked for five years at a company that designed, built and installed laser welding assembly systems. And by all accounts she did her job well -- being told by her supervisor, 'If I could duplicate you, I'd be able to get rid of the rest of the staff.'

"Company officials had told her when she was hired in 1998 that they didn't negotiate pay. Five years later, the company went into bankruptcy. Employees of the company had to go through bankruptcy court for their final paychecks and any back vacation pay owed. Sleeman opted to sign up for a mailing list so she could see the bankruptcy court's list of claims. People she had supervised were on that list -- and their claims for two weeks of pay were larger than hers."

Yet Republicans blocked a bill on equal pay a few days ago because they said it wasn't needed. Women have all the pay equity they need, Republicans say. 

Do they?

Sen. McCaskill's true story would indicate otherwise. Imagine being a woman supervisor with a high level of expertise in a tech industry who is paid less than people she supervised.

So all is well? Doesn't sound like it to me. Women still make 77 cents on the dollar to what men make.

Supporters of the Paycheck Fairness Act say the act would bring transparency, at least, to worker pay by making it illegal for employers to penalize employees who discuss their salaries and by requiring the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect pay information from employers.

Lily Ledbetter, after all, didn't know that she was being paid less than male supervisors doing the same supervisory job she did and had done longer than they had, until she received an anonymous note from payroll telling her about the pay inequity. She sued and lost because the U.S. Supreme Court said she should have filed within 180 days of her first discriminatory paycheck. That, of course, would have been hard to do since she only found out late in her career that she was being discriminated against, and only because of an anonymous note from Payroll.

Women in the workplace support families, including children and often, men who are out of work. Providing paycheck fairness is about families and providing fairness to families to provide for themselves instead of asking for handouts to supplement their income.

Most people on welfare are women. Most people on food stamps and subsidized housing are women. Most people on WIC are women. Most people in minimum-wage jobs are women.

If women in high places are paid less than their male counterparts doing the same work or lesser work in a subordinate position, imagine how women on the bottom of the food chain are doing.

It's time to get serious about pay equity, and the Republicans are showing no signs of doing so. The Republicans' War on Women is real and should inspire us to show up at the polls in the midterm elections in 2014. Not one single Republican senator voted for the Paycheck Fairness Act. Not one.

Consider Democrat Allison Lundergan Grimes' credible and winnable campaign against Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Sen. McConnell specifically slammed the paycheck fairness act and voted against it.
 
McConnell is being primaried from the right by businessman Matt Bevin, believe it or not (where is the daylight between McConnell and the Far Right?), and is considered vulnerable, although banks, insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceuticals, and other industries are pouring money into McConnell's campaign.

Sen. McConnell has so many coal mine owners indebted to him and his wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, for warning federal mine inspectors not to follow regulations in inspecting coal mines, which resulted in deadly accidents in coal mines as far away from Kentucky as Utah. Other anti-regulatory businesses like Wall Street banks and others owe a great deal to McConnell as well. He's the kind of slippery, on-the-take corporate sycophant we could do without.