Fair pay for equal work... we got it!
This is just one small indication of how elections have consequences, and things really are changing...
LEDBETTER ACT PASSES....Good news on the pay discrimination front:
The Senate approved landmark worker rights legislation on Thursday that will make it easier for those who think they've endured pay discrimination to seek legal help. The vote was 61-36.
....The legislation overrides a May 2007 Supreme Court ruling that [Lilly] Ledbetter, a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company employee in Gadsden, Ala., couldn't sue her employer for pay discrimination because she didn't file suit within 180 days of the alleged discriminatory act.
McClatchy, naturally, doesn't bother to tell its readers the party breakdown of the vote, but it's actually an interesting one: all 56 voting Democrats supported the bill, and five Republicans joined in. Which ones? Arlen Specter plus all four of the women in the GOP caucus. Imagine that.
(From Kevin Drum/Mother Jones)
So here you have the Democrats, not a few days in from inauguration... passing a law which says that women have the right to sue on the basis of discrimination if they are paid less for the same job as a man. Now, this had actually been the law of the land, until Bush's two Supreme Court Justices took the bench. When they overturned the reading of the law, Bush refused to sign a new law outlawing pay discrimination.
Needless to say, the republicans still have not gotten the message. Most of them in the Senate voted against the bill. These are the small details that most people don't know. Details that really would make a difference in the way people vote. Keep that in mind in four years.
