Paul Bass Photo
Rosa DeLauro brings mom Luisa to 200 Orange St. to vote in 2016.
Rosa DeLauro didn’t “celebrate” National Pay Equity Day Tuesday. She revived an effort to render the occasion moot.
National Pay Equity Day recognizes the quest to have women earn the same amount as men for performing comparable jobs. Women currently earn an estimated 77 cents on every dollar men work for comparable jobs. That means losing out on $12,000 a year (plus receiving lower Social Security benefits later on). For Black women the number is 64 cents on the dollar; for Latinas, 54 cents; for Native American women, 51 cents.
“We need to get rid of” Pay Equity Day by making “sure that men and women in the same job” receive the same pay, DeLauro, New Haven’s U.S. Congresswoman, said Wednesday in an interview on WNHH FM.
To that end, DeLauro and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray have reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would seek to equalize pay by enabling women to press class action lawsuits based on systemic wage discrimination; bar bosses from retaliating against women who discuss salaries with coworkers or insisting on salary history as part of the interviewing and hiring process; broaden the the Civil Rights Act’s provision of remedies for employees filing race-based wage discrimination complaints to those filing sex-based claims.
The act would also create a negotiating skills program for women and girls. The cultural factors that lead to pay inequity include women less often negotiating for higher pay. “It’s as much cultural as anything else. Somehow women’s work is less respected. It’s less recognized as value in our country. And it is long past due that this mindset changes,” argued DeLauro, whose mother Luisa was a garment worker in a Wooster Square sweatshop (and later in life a New Haven alderwoman).
DeLauro characterized the Paycheck Fairness bill as part of a broader “new social safety net” platform that includes paid sick days and family and medical leave, and lower fees and higher salaries in childcare.
DeLauro has introduced versions of this bill before: It passed the House of Representatives four times, only to die in the Senate.
She acknowledged that it faces a similar challenge in the current Congress. She vowed to keep pressing the proposal.
“You can’t stop,” DeLauro said. “You can’t get tired.”
Click on the video to watch the full conversation with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro on WNHH FM.