Washington, DC—Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke on the floor of the United States Senate today, urging the Senate to pass legislation to remove an obstacle that denies women and other workers a fair opportunity to seek redress when they are the victims of pay discrimination. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, of which Senator Clinton is an original cosponsor, would reestablish a fair rule for filing claims of pay discrimination based on race, national origin, gender, religious, age or disability. Following her speech, Senator Clinton met with Lilly Ledbetter to discuss the Fair Pay Act and Ms. Ledbetter’s long struggle against pay discrimination.

“We thought we had ended discrimination in the workplace against women when the Equal Pay Act was passed all those years ago,” said Senator Clinton. “But clearly, we have not finished the business of guaranteeing equality in the workplace: fair and equal pay for those who do the same jobs.”

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overturns the decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., in which a divided Supreme Court held that workers must sue for pay discrimination within 180 days after the original pay-setting decision, even if the pay discrimination continues after the 180-day period. The Fair Pay Act restores a reasonable time limit for filing pay discrimination claims by starting the clock for filing pay discrimination claims each time the discriminatory compensation is received, rather than when the employer initially decides to discriminate. The bill mirrors language prohibiting discriminatory seniority systems, which was included in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

Senator Clinton has long been an advocate for equal pay for women. She introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would take critical steps to empower women to negotiate for equal pay, to create strong incentives for employers to obey the Equal Pay Act and to strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. Last year, Senator Clinton co-chaired a hearing of the Labor Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) entitled "Closing the Gap: Equal Pay for Women Workers" to draw attention to the need to close the continuing pay gap between men and women. On Equal Pay Day 2007, she called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) to investigate the role the federal government has and can play to remedy pay inequities in the workplace. In 2006, Senator Clinton co-hosted a "Pay Equity for Women" seminar with Stony Brook University that drew hundreds of students as well as leading educators and experts in gender equity business issues. At the seminar, Senator Clinton unveiled a resource guide titled, "Know What to Ask & Know Your Rights: A Pay Equity Guide on How to Help Yourself in the Workplace." The guide is an informative tool for young women entering the workforce and can be found on Senator Clinton's web site here.

The following is a transcript of Senator Clinton’s remarks.

Senator Clinton: I think it's important that we go back to the facts and remind ourselves in this chamber about the person, the real, live woman for whom this legislation is named, Lilly Ledbetter. She was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of the years she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Now initially, Lilly Ledbetter's salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison. And it was slipping in comparison with men who had equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Lilly Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager, and the pay discrepancy between her and her 15 male counterparts was stark. She was paid $3,727 a month. The lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 a month and the highest $5,236. In other words, Goodyear paid her male counterparts 25 to 40 percent more than she earned for doing the same job.

Now, when she discovered this, which she hadn't for years, because it’s somewhat difficult, if not impossible, to obtain information about the salaries of your counterparts and lots of times why would you ask—you're doing the same job, you show up at the same time, you have the same duties—who would imagine that you would be paid less than the younger man who just came on the job a year or two before, or the older man with whom you had worked for years? So when she discovered that, she rightly sought to enforce her rights, and a jury agreed, a jury of her peers, that she had suffered discrimination on the basis of her gender. And the district court awarded her $220,000 in back pay and more than $3 million in punitive damages. The court of appeals reversed that, claiming she had not filed her charge of discrimination in a timely manner. And the Supreme Court agreed.

Now, Lilly Ledbetter is retired from her job. Nothing we do here today will have any impact on her. But she has tirelessly campaigned across this country for basic fairness. We thought we had ended discrimination in the workplace against women when the Equal Pay Act was passed all those years ago. In fact, yesterday was the day we commemorate the passage of the Equal Pay Act, but clearly, we have not finished the business of guaranteeing equality in the workplace, fair and equal pay for those who do the same jobs.

Nearly a century after women earned the right to vote, women still make 77 cents to every man's dollar. The effects of the recession that we are in right now in many parts of our country is affecting women worse than their male counterparts. And this is not just about the women themselves, it is about their families. I just came from Indianapolis where I was introduced at an event by a young single mom. I meet young single moms all over America. They work really, really hard for themselves and their children. So when they are discriminated against in the workplace, they bring less home to take care of the children that they're responsible for.

We can talk about what needs to be done here, and there are, I'm sure, all kinds of legal reasons that it doesn't make sense to end discrimination, that it doesn't make sense finally to have our laws enforced. But this is the law that we had until the Supreme Court changed it. Until the Supreme Court said, “No, wait a minute, you're supposed to actually know that you're being discriminated against despite the conditions in the workplace and file whatever action make whatever complaint you can at that moment.” Lilly Ledbetter acted as soon as she knew. She just didn't know until that information was made available to her. I'm hoping that this chamber will stand up for fundamental fairness for women in the workplace. I'm hoping you will stand up and vote to make it clear that women who get up every single day and go to work deserve to be paid equally to their male counterparts. That's all Lilly Ledbetter wanted, and that is what we should deliver today.

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