After he finished his remarks, the people in the packed room stood and applauded as he returned to his desk for the signing. I saw Vickie and her family sitting next to Michelle Obama. Jon sat behind them. Even though I knew he wasn’t there, I scanned the room, looking for Charles’s piercing blue eyes and wide smile. In that moment, I felt the unbearable emptiness of that place beside me I’d leaned into for as long as I could remember. The crowd’s applause lessened. President Obama looked at me, and I stepped forward to say a few words. I thanked God for all the good people around me who had worked so hard to pass the law, but sorrow sifted through my happiness all during that day as I did my best to hold my shoulders high and smile a hundred smiles.
Right after the bill had passed the Senate, I’d flown to New Jersey to speak at an American Association of University Women meeting. As I ate my breakfast that morning in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, I was reading an article about me in the Wall Street Journal. When the waitress poured me some more coffee, she noticed the article about the bill and the picture of me. She looked at me and then at the paper and back at me. And I said, “Yes, I’m Lilly Ledbetter.” I finished my breakfast and the paper and kept waiting for my bill. It never came, so finally I asked the young woman, and she said it was covered. I said, “No, no. You don’t need to do that.” She said, “All the waitresses wanted to thank you for what you’ve done.” The next morning, the waitresses covered my bill again. These unexpected gestures, along with the incredible passage of the bill, helped me slowly find my way through my sadness.
AS I finish telling you the story behind the legislation that carries my name, at the age of seventy-three, I travel the world, speaking to law schools, high schools, women’s professional groups and organizations, government agencies, and political groups on the state and national level, as well as at military bases and Democratic fundraisers. I often speak at universities, something I especially enjoy.
I’ll never forget the day I spoke at Harvard. I’d scooted out to go to the ladies’ room before my speech. I hurried into the stall, afraid I’d be late. Fumbling with the lock, at first I didn’t notice the poster plastered on the stall door. It was my picture staring right back at me on the announcement for the lecture. I smiled back at myself, and even laughed out loud a little. Here I was, unable to go to college myself, speaking to the brightest young minds in the country. I just prayed that in these difficult economic times these young folks would have the power, voice, and passion to create a truly equitable workforce for all working families.
I told the Harvard undergraduates what I tell all of my audiences. For almost two decades, I was cheated. That’s the way I see it. In 1979, when I began my career as one of the first women ever to work at Goodyear, my pay was equal to that of my male supervisors. But in 1981, shortly after I finally came forward about being sexually harassed and was consequentially labeled a “troublemaker,” Goodyear implemented a merit-based program to award annual salary increases based on performance. My salary started slipping, despite positive performance reviews. By the end of 1997, I was being paid as much as 40 percent less than the male managers, taking home $3,727 each month while the lowest-paid male area manager received $4,286 and the highest-paid pocketed $5,236 per month. Of course, I had no idea. After giving almost twenty of the best years of my life to Goodyear, in the end I lost more than $224,000 in salary and even more in overtime and retirement money.
But what really enrages me is that my experience is not uncommon. Today, 71 million women work to support themselves and their families but continue to make seventy-eight cents for every dollar a man takes home. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research calculated that a typical twenty-five-year-old woman who graduated from college in 1984 and who was in her mid-forties in 2004 has lost more than $440,000. In 2004, the median annual earnings of women aged fifteen and older was $31,223, compared with $40,798 for men. If women in the workforce earned the same as men who work the same number of hours; have the same education, age, and union status; and live in the same area of the country, their annual income would rise about $4,000, and their poverty rates would be cut at least in half.
When I set out on my Goodyear career in 1979, it wasn’t part of my grand plan to someday have my name be on a Supreme Court case or an act of Congress. I simply wanted to work hard and support my family. The rest, I believed, would take care of itself.
Clearly, fate had other plans for this Alabama girl. After all, I started out as a supervisor at a tire plant. Thirty years later, I’ve been a litigant, an advocate, a lobbyist, an author, and a public speaker. Sometimes, life throws us curveballs. We may not have asked for them, we may not have even expected them, but we still have to deal with them.
After all that’s happened to me, I’ve realized that the true test of an individual is not so much what happens to her, but how she reacts to it. When we see an injustice, do we sit and do nothing, or do we fight back? When we experience failure, do we passively accept it, or do we learn from it and do better the next time? When we get knocked down, do we stay down, or do we get back up? Each of us, every day, breaks through barriers for women and girls simply because we choose to believe the future can be better.
It’s important to recognize that there’s still much that needs to be accomplished to achieve true pay equity for women. To help end wage discrimination based on gender, the Paycheck Fairness Act still needs to be made into law. It has passed the House but was filibustered by the Republicans in the Senate in November 2010; it lacked two of the sixty votes necessary to end the debate and proceed to a vote. It has now been reintroduced to Congress by the indomitable Senator Barbara Mikulski and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, both champions of my bill. This act strengthens and updates the Equal Pay Act passed by President Kennedy in 1963. Among other things, it will bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary and facilitate class-action Equal Pay Act claims.
Those young waitresses who recognized me the day after the bill had passed and all those bright-faced young folks I speak to across the country might bear the fruit of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. But more than that, I’m hopeful that the Ledbetter Act will impact future generations, generations of women and men I will not live to see but my granddaughter and great-granddaughter will.
GRANNY MAC was right. The day I heard the whippoorwill call on my way to work, a death occurred. When I found the note, life as I knew it ended. All I’d ever dreamed of as a young girl was escaping the hot, dusty cotton fields, leaving behind the long sack dragging around my neck that I never could fill. But those endless rows of cotton that pricked my hands until they bled were my saving grace on the journey I began that spring day so long ago. My transformation from an unknown tire manager facing an all-too-common injustice to a woman people now recognize as “the grandmother of equal pay” took every ounce of grit I’d gained picking cotton on my grandfather’s farm in Possum Trot, Alabama.
MY SPEECH AT THE 2008
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
GOOD EVENING. Many of you are probably asking: Who is that grandmother from Alabama at the podium? I can assure you, nobody is more surprised, or humbled, than I am. I’m here to talk about America’s commitment to fairness and equality, and how people like me—and like you—suffer when that commitment is betrayed.
How fitting that I speak to you on Women’s Equality Day, when we celebrate ratification of the amendment that gave women the right to vote. Even as we celebrate, let’s also remind ourselves: The fight for equality is not over. I know that from personal experience. I was a trailblazer when I went to work as a female supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama.
My job demanded a lot, and I gave it 100 percent. I kept up with every one of my male coworkers. But toward the end of my nineteen years at Goodyear, I began to suspect that I wasn’t getting paid as much as men doing the same job. An anonymous note in my mailbox confirmed that I was right. Despite praising me for my work, Goodyear gave me sma
ller raises than my male co-managers, over and over.
Those differences affected my family’s quality of life then, and they affect my retirement now. When I discovered the injustice, I thought about moving on. But in the end, I couldn’t ignore the discrimination. So I went to court. A jury agreed with me. They found that my employer had violated the law and awarded me what I was owed.
I hoped the verdict would make my company feel the sting, learn a lesson and never again treat women unfairly. But they appealed, all the way to the Supreme Court, and in a 5-to-4 decision our highest court sided with big business. They said I should have filed my complaint within six months of Goodyear’s first decision to pay me less, even though I didn’t know that’s what they were doing.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the ruling made no sense in the real world. She was right. The House of Representatives passed a bill that would make sure what was done to me couldn’t happen again. But when it got to the Senate, enough Republicans opposed it to prevent a vote.
We can’t afford more of the same votes that deny women their equal rights. Barack Obama is on our side. He is fighting to fix this terrible ruling, and as president, he has promised to appoint justices who will enforce laws that protect everyday people like me. But this isn’t a Democratic or a Republican issue. It’s a fairness issue. And fortunately, there are some Republicans—and a lot of Democrats—who are on our side.
My case is over. I will never receive the pay I deserve. But there will be a far richer reward if we secure fair pay. For our children and grandchildren, so that no one will ever again experience the discrimination that I did. Equal pay for equal work is a fundamental American principle. We need leaders in this country who will fight for it. With all of us working together, we can have the change we need and the opportunity we all deserve.
BENCH ANNOUNCEMENT
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 05-1074 Tuesday, May 29, 2007
FOUR MEMBERS of this Court, Justices Stevens, Souter, Breyer and I, dissent from today’s decision. In our view, the Court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination. Today’s decision counsels: Sue early on, when it is uncertain whether discrimination accounts for the pay disparity you are beginning to experience. Indeed, initially you may not know that men are receiving more for substantially similar work. (Of course, you are likely to lose such a less-than-fully baked case.) If you sue only when the pay disparity becomes steady and large enough to enable you to mount a winnable case, you will be cut off at the court’s threshold for suing too late. That situation cannot be what Congress intended when, in Title VII, it outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in our Nation’s workplaces.
Lilly Ledbetter, the plaintiff in this case, was engaged as an area manager at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Alabama in 1979. Her starting salary was in line with the salaries of men performing similar work. But over time, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male employees with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman left working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter’s pay was 15 to 40 percent less than every other area manager.
Ledbetter complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 1998. She charged that, in violation of Title VII, Goodyear paid her a discriminatorily low salary because of her sex. The charge was eventually brought to court and tried to a jury. The jury found it “more likely than not that [Goodyear] paid [Ledbetter] a[n] unequal salary because of her sex.” The Court today nullifies that verdict, holding that Ledbetter’s claim is time barred.
Title VII provides that a charge of discrimination “shall be filed within [180] days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred.” Ledbetter charged, and proved at trial, that the paychecks she received within the 180-day filing period were substantially lower than the paychecks received by men doing the same work. Further, she introduced substantial evidence showing that discrimination accounted for the pay differential, indeed, that discrimination against women as supervisors was pervasive at Goodyear’s plant. That evidence was unavailing, the Court holds, because it was incumbent on Ledbetter to file charges of discrimination year-by-year, each time Goodyear failed to increase her salary commensurate with the salaries of her male peers. Any annual pay decision not contested promptly (within 180 days), the Court affirms, becomes grandfathered, beyond the province of Title VII ever to repair.
Title VII was meant to govern real-world employment practices, and that world is what the Court today ignores. Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; only over time is there strong cause to suspect that discrimination is at work. Comparative pay information is not routinely communicated to employees. Instead, it is often hidden from the employee’s view. Small initial discrepancies, even if the employee knows they exist, may not be seen as grounds for a federal case. An employee like Ledbetter, trying to succeed in a male-dominated workplace, in a job filled only by men before she was hired, understandably may be anxious to avoid making waves.
Pay discrimination that recurs and swells in impact, is significantly different from discrete adverse actions promptly communicated and “easy to identify” as discriminatory. Events in that category include firing, denial of a promotion, or refusal to hire. In contrast to those unambiguous actions, until a pay disparity becomes apparent and sizable, an employee is unlikely to comprehend her plight and, therefore, to complain about it. Ledbetter’s initial readiness to give her employer the benefit of the doubt should not preclude her from later seeking redress for the continuing payment to her of a salary depressed because of her sex.
Yet, as the Court reads Title VII, each and every pay decision Ledbetter did not promptly challenge wiped the slate clean. Nevermind the cumulative effect of a series of decisions that, together, set her pay well below that of every male area manager. Knowingly carrying past pay discrimination forward must be treated as lawful. Ledbetter may not be compensated under Title VII for the lower pay she was in fact receiving when she complained to the EEOC. Notably, the same denial of relief would occur had Ledbetter encountered pay discrimination based on race, religion, age, national origin, or disability.
This is not the first time the Court has ordered a cramped interpretation of Title VII, incompatible with the statute’s broad remedial purpose. In 1991, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that effectively overruled several of this Court’s similarly restrictive decisions. Today, the ball again lies in Congress’ court. As in 1991, the Legislature has cause to note and correct this Court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SPEECH upon the signing of THE LILLY LEDBETTER FAIR PAY RESTORATION ACT, January 29, 2009
IT IS fitting that with the very first bill I sign—the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act—we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.
It is also fitting that we are joined today by the woman after whom this bill is named—someone Michelle and I have had the privilege of getting to know for ourselves. Lilly Ledbetter did not set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She was just a good hard worker who did her job—and did it well—for nearly two decades before discovering that, for years, she was paid less than her male colleagues for the very same work. Over the course of her career, she lost more than $200,000 in salary, and even more in pension and Social Security benefits—losses she still feels today.
Now, Lilly could have accepted her lot and moved on. She could have decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle and the harassment that would inevitably come with speaking up for what she deserved. But instead, she decided that there was a principle at stake, something worth fighting for. So she set out on a journey that would take more than ten years, take her all the way t
o the Supreme Court of the United States, and lead to this day and this bill which will help others get the justice she was denied.
Because while this bill bears her name, Lilly knows this story isn’t just about her. It’s the story of women across this country still earning just seventy-eight cents for every dollar men earn—women of color even less—which means that today, in the year 2009, countless women are still losing thousands of dollars in salary, income and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime.
But equal pay is by no means just a women’s issue—it’s a family issue. It’s about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition and child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where, when one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves, that’s the difference between affording the mortgage—or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor’s bills—or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month’s paycheck to simple and plain discrimination.
So signing this bill today is to send a clear message: that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody. That there are no second-class citizens in our workplaces, and that it’s not just unfair and illegal—it’s bad for business—to pay somebody less because of their gender, or their age, or their race, or their ethnicity, religion, or disability. And that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook—it’s about how our laws affect the daily realities of people: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals.
Ultimately, equal pay isn’t just an economic issue for millions of Americans and their families, it’s a question of who we are—and whether we’re truly living up to our fundamental ideals. Whether we’ll do our part, as generations before us, to ensure those words put on paper some two hundred years ago really mean something—to breathe new life into them with the more enlightened understanding that is appropriate for our time.
Grace and Grit Page 24
