Proponents of equal pay unbalanced? Women's earnings continue to divide advocacy groups, even as two bills intended to counter discrimination wind their way through congress

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 17, 1999 | by Jennifer Kabbany, | Julie Hyman

Women who wore "Where's my 26 cents?" buttons to work recently in honor of Equal Pay Day don't have their facts straight, according to Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, authors of Wornen's Figures, a provocative book published by the American Enterprise Institute. The writers argue that childless women between the ages of 27 and 33 make 98 cents to every man's dollar -- a statistic that shatters the glass-ceiling and "pink-ghetto" myths.

But the national debate over whether women have made gains toward equal pay still rages. In honor of Equal Pay Day, President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton renewed their support for equality in the workplace.

"There is still a sizable gap between men's and women's salaries that can best be explained by one phenomenon: the continuing presence and the persistent effect of discrimination, sometimes in very subtle ways," said Hillary Clinton during a roundtable discussion with Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman and four female workers who have filed wage-discrimination lawsuits.

Conservative women's groups disagree with the first lady. "I think it's a shame that Equal Pay Day defines a woman's worth by the size of her paycheck," says Carmen Pate, president of Concerned Women for America. "Choosing to work part time or taking temporary leave to care for families are the choices women make every day. Women should be able to do this without becoming symbols for a movement that continually cries wolf about a wage gap."

Meanwhile, two bills -- the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Equal Pay Initiative -- are winding their way through Congress. Opponents of the bills say they overlap with the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and that the new regulations would create costly litigation and frivolous lawsuits. The legislation would allow women to sue their employers for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages in addition to the limited damages and back-pay awards available under federal law.

"This is one of the most off-the-wall bills I've seen," says Randy Johnson, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Labor and Employment Benefits, referring to the Paycheck Fairness Act, which he believes will be used as a tool to gain more federal control of businesses.

Proponents of the bills contend they would strengthen the enforcement of existing equal-pay laws, which they believe have proved ineffective. Under the Equal Pay Initiative, two employees at the same company who have different jobs of the same value would be required to receive equal pay.

The National Committee on Pay Equity was founded in 1979 as a coalition of women's groups, civil-rights organizations and unions concerned about the wage gap. Karen Nussbaum, director of the working women department at the AFL-CIO, a member organization of the committee, says a 1997 survey conducted by her organization supports the notion that women remain very pay-conscious. "We found that equal pay was the No. 1 issue," says Nussbaum, who cites a more recent survey that found the average working family loses more than $4,000 a year because of the wage gap.

But according to Anita K. Blair, vice president of Independent Women's Forum, the AFL-CIO skews its numbers in an attempt to make everything "unionized." The AFL-CIO wants "our salaries to be decided by government agencies rather than a worker and her boss," says Blair. "Mothers generally make career decisions that result in less hours or wages," she says. "That doesn't mean if you're a mother in the workforce that you are being paid less."