Ensuring Equal Pay with the Paycheck Fairness Act Hearing
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HRG. 113–830 ACCESS TO JUSTICE: ENSURING EQUAL PAY WITH THE PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT HEARING OF THE COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON EXAMINING S. 84, TO AMEND THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938 TO PROVIDE MORE EFFECTIVE REMEDIES TO VICTIMS OF DISCRIMI- NATION IN THE PAYMENT OF WAGES ON THE BASIS OF SEX APRIL 1, 2014 Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 22–608 PDF WASHINGTON : 2016 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS TOM HARKIN, Iowa, Chairman BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee PATTY MURRAY, Washington MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont RICHARD BURR, North Carolina ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina RAND PAUL, Kentucky AL FRANKEN, Minnesota ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado PAT ROBERTS, Kansas SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin MARK KIRK, Illinois CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut TIM SCOTT, South Carolina ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts DEREK MILLER, Staff Director LAUREN MCFERRAN, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel DAVID P. CLEARY, Republican Staff Director (II) VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 0486 Sfmt 0486 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE CONTENTS STATEMENTS TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014 Page COMMITTEE MEMBERS Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from the State of Maryland ............ 1 Alexander, Hon. Lamar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Tennessee, opening statement .............................................................................................................. 2 Warren, Hon. Elizabeth, a U.S. Senator from the State of Massachusetts ........ 45 Baldwin, Hon. Tammy, a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin .................. 47 Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota .......................... 52 WITNESSES Eisenberg, Deborah Thompson, Associate Professor of Law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Baltimore, MD ......................... 5 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6 Young, ReShonda, Operations Manager, Alpha Express, Inc., Waterloo, IA ..... 19 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 20 Sleeman, Kerri, Mechanical Engineer, Houghton, MI .......................................... 23 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 24 Olson, Camille A., Partner, Seyfarth Shaw, Chicago, IL ..................................... 28 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30 ADDITIONAL MATERIAL Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.: Letter: Camille A. Olson ........................................................................................ 56 Response by Deborah Thompson Eisenberg to questions of: Senator Alexander ..................................................................................... 60 Senator Franken ........................................................................................ 62 Response of Camille A. Olson to questions of Senator Harkin, Senator Alexander, and Senator Mikulski ................................................................ 63 (III) VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 0486 Sfmt 0486 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 0486 Sfmt 0486 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE ACCESS TO JUSTICE: ENSURING EQUAL PAY WITH THE PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:14 p.m., in room SD–430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Barbara Mikulski presiding. Present: Senators Mikulski, Murray, Casey, Franken, Baldwin, Murphy, Warren, and Alexander. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MIKULSKI Senator MIKULSKI. Good afternoon, everybody. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will come to order. Today, we are holding a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness bill. The topic of the hearing is Access to Justice: Ensuring Equal Pay with the Paycheck Fairness Act. We will hear from a distinguished group of visitors who will tell their stories and also, hopefully, will provide us with insights on what is the best way to proceed. For me, I want to make sure that women have a fair shot, a fair shot at equal pay for equal work. I want to finish the job we began with Lilly Ledbetter in which we kept the courthouse door open so that if you felt Equal Pay rights had been violated, you would have access to the courts without the arbitrary decisions of time limits. We find that the Equal Pay Act again is thwarted over the years through either retaliation for trying to find out what others are paid in your work place, or that they’re increasing loopholes, saying that it’s not identical or not comparable work. So we want to finish the job, end the retaliation, end paycheck secrecy, and also close the loopholes that prevent equal pay for equal or comparable work. In 1963, Lyndon Johnson wanted to pass three major civil rights bills, Equal Pay for Equal Work, the Civil Rights Act, and also the Voting Rights Act. He began with equal pay, because he thought it would be the easiest to pass and the easiest to enforce. And here we are now, 50 years later, in some ways fighting the same battles. So we hope that through this legislation, we will finally end pay- check secrecy, workplace retaliation if you try to find out or offer any kind of advocacy in your own behalf to get equal pay, and also to close those loopholes. Women are almost half of the workforce. In many instances, 40 percent are now the sole bread winners for families. (1) VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE 2 And many over the years, for many decades, have said, ‘‘Well, we don’t have to pay you as much because the guys are the bread win- ners.’’ Well, now, the women are the bread winners, and they’re tired of getting paid in crumbs. So this is what we’re trying to do here, to look at the legislation, and to look at the best way forward to continue that legislation. I know we’ve had a delayed time in starting this hearing because of the votes. So I’m going to ask unanimous consent that my full statement go into the record, and I’m going to turn to Senator Alex- ander, who offers such great insight on these issues, for any com- ments that he has. [The prepared statement of Senator Mikulski was not available at time of print.] Senator Alexander. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ALEXANDER Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I appreciate that. I’m not going to take an excessive amount of time, but I do want to make my statement. I thank you for the hearing, but I think it ought to be on a dif- ferent subject. I think it ought to be about more flexibility for work- ing parents. This bill is about more litigation, more lawyers, higher income for trial lawyers, and more class action lawsuits whether you want them on your behalf or not. Let me tell a story to suggest why I believe instead we should be talking about more flexibility for working parents. Years ago, in my private life, I helped start a company with Bob Keeshan, Cap- tain Kangaroo, and my wife and a couple of others that later merged with Bright Horizons and became the largest worksite daycare provider in the country. We recognized that probably the most important social phe- nomenon in our country over the last 30 or 40 years are the num- ber of women working outside the home. And, typically, many of them had young children, and the idea was that we would help cor- porations provide worksite daycare centers that were safe and good for those moms, and dads as well, who worked with young children outside the home. We did a lot of surveys, and what we found out was that in many cases, more important than pay was flexibility in the workforce, that a mom or a dad with a young child who was working outside the home didn’t want to miss the school play, didn’t want to miss the football game, wanted to be available to deal with a sick child. I tell that story because I think instead of a law like the one pro- posed here, which would literally reduce the flexibility that employ- ers have to provide men and women in the workplace with more flexibility to go to the football game or the school play, I think we need more flexibility, not a mandate. We need to enable employers to do that. Let me give you an example or two. Take a school where an em- ployer might want to say, as we did in Tennessee 30 years ago, ‘‘We’re going to pay teachers more for teaching well.’’ That’s a very subjective thing to do. Or we might be in a situation where we wanted to encourage girls to become more interested in mathe- VerDate Nov 24 2008 16:33 Jan 17, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\DOCS\22608.TXT DENISE 3 matics. And to do that, we might like to hire an outstanding woman teacher of mathematics and science to be in the classroom. We might have to pay her more than we do a man, because she has so many other opportunities if she has those talents. Or, on the other hand, we might have a rough school where we need a man who is a strong role model for boys who cause a lot of trouble.