Consumer Law

Fair Pay Fixes Passed!

By Kia Franklin

Talk about a running start. Congress opened this year with some groundbreaking stuff!

On Friday the House passed 2 bills to address job discrimination (NYT). The first, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, corrects the terrible Ledbetter v. Goodyear decision. The Ledbetter decision created severe roadblocks for victims of paycheck discrimination by protecting companies from lawsuits if they hide the first discriminatory act from the employee for 180 days. The second, the Paycheck Fairness Act, also significantly strengthens protections of employees against pay discrimination. It eliminates some of companies' more common cop-out defenses for pay differences, prohibits retaliation against workers who share salary information, and allows for compensatory and punitive damages in Equal Pay Act lawsuits.

How exciting! Obama intends to support these bills, and Congress intends to prevent Bush from having the opportunity to veto them.

And how effective could these bills really be if they didn't evoke some degree of snarkiness from the corporate lobby? Rest assured: NAM hates them, Bush hates them, and the Chamber hates them. In other words, it's safe to assume ordinary people should just love 'em!

Full post as published by TortDeform.com on January 12, 2009 (boomark / email).