So the Supreme Court has decided to take the 19th century approach to fair wages for women and minorities. Their ruling pretty much makes it impossible to sue your employer if you’re not making as much as your white male colleagues.
One hundred eighty days?! Words fail me. The only way to make sure you’re getting a fair wage now is to ask your brand-new coworkers what they make as soon as you get hired.
I pit you, SCOTUS, for stamping decades of hard lobbying and awareness of equal pay for equal work. Oh, and a hearty “fuck you” to President Bush for taking the side of the employer before the case was even heard. That’s gotta be illegal somewhere.
I’m not sure if the SCOTUS correctly interpreted the 180 day clause or not, the EEOC for years had interpreted each new pay check as an “act of discrimination” the SCOTUS decided the initial setting of the wage is an act of discrimination and subsequent pay checks are not. Statutorily it’s probably vaguely worded, which is why different appellate courts have interpreted it differently in the past, which is what lead the SCOTUS to take the case for the purpose of clarifying it.
Since it’s a law passed by Congress, Congress can easily clarify themselves on the matter, and Sen. Clinton has already announced her intentions to submit a bill that would do just that.
BTW, there’s no 180 day limit when you bring claims under the Equal Pay Act; however you don’t get access to the nice, fat, juicy punitive damages that way.
Well, I’d rather have Congress make that decision. I agree that 180 days seems awfully short, but that’s a different matter. The EEOC is not part of the judiciary and its decisions should not influence the court.
Given that, in many/most companies, pay rates are regarded as confidential between the individual employee and the employer, I would think it almost impossible to bring a claim in practice. So the remedy might be for Congress to require compensation rates of all employees to be disclosed to all employees of a company.
I think the marketplace is competitive enough that this sort of thing is probably going to become anachronistic. Today’s corporate environment seems to care less about the good old boy network, than it does about productivity. If you’re not getting paid enough, jump ship and go to a company willing to pay you more if you’re that good.
That would be terrible policy, and possibly an invasion of privacy. Much easier to extend the 180 day deadline to keep it in line with other statutes of limitation, say 7 years. Or, better define an “act of discrimination” to include each issuance of a paycheck.
So in order to claim discrimination, you have to use information that you aren’t even allowed to have and present your case within the first 180 days of employment. I dare say the law will not be terribly effective, given those constraints. But John is right, Congress passed the silly thing, Congress should fix it.
That’s what is so confusing to me. It seems obvious that each paycheck is an act of discrimination, if indeed discrimination can be proved. If each person at her level negotiates their own pay raises and benefits then how can the company be guilty of discrimination unless she can prove her male counterparts were consistantly offered a higher salary to begin with.
OTOH the Equal pay act sounds promising. Does that mean she can at least recover the difference in pay over the last 20 years?
Isn’t that method usually forbidden? Most companies have a “Don’t ask / don’t tell” policy when it comes to employees salaries. This seems to be an easy-out for the company:
“She’s not paid less because she’s a woman, she’s paid less because she disregards company policy. Case in point: Discussing her pay with co-workers, which is strictly prohibited.”
Why is it that the Supreme Court is viewed as a set of philospher-kings that hold final rule over us all?
Their job is to interpret the law. They did. Congress wrote the law. We elect Congress to write laws. If we don’t like the laws Congress writes, we have many avenues open; what we should NOT be doing, Agent Foxtrot, is wishing that the wise kings and queens of the Supreme Court will save us.
Now that there is a GD thread on this subject, I am going to post over there, not here. I suggest others do the same… unless you just want to rant, which would be appropriate from this forum.
That’s assuming that the Supreme Court correctly interpreted Congress’s intent. I think it’s certainly valid to criticize the Supreme Court when they find that the law that Congress passed doesn’t really mean what we thought it did, what the agency enforcing the law thought it did, or what Congress itself thought it did (I’ll concede that the last is mere speculation, but Congress never availed itself of the opportunity to correct the matter while the EEOC was acting contrary to what SCOTUS decided their intent was).
