The Equal Pay Act

Forty years ago, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law, paving the way for the long march toward equal opportunity in the workplace. At the time, full-time working women were paid on average 59 cents to the dollar earned by their male counterparts, according to government data.

At the White House signing ceremony, President Kennedy said the EPA:

The EPA is the oldest workplace civil rights law enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), predating passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 by one full year. Once enacted, the EPA was originally enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor with jurisdiction being transferred to the EEOC in 1979.

The EPA prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the payment of wages or benefits, where men and women perform work of similar skill, effort, and responsibility for the same employer under similar working conditions. Under the EPA :

• It is unlawful for employers to reduce the wages of either sex to equalize pay between men and women;
• A violation may occur where a different wage is paid to a person who worked in the same job before or after an employee of the opposite sex;
• A violation may also take place where a labor union causes the employer to violate the law;
• An employer is permitted to base salary differences on seniority, merit, and quantity or quality of production - in fact, generally any other business-related factor, as long as it is not based on a person's sex; and
• Employers found in violation of the EPA can be compelled to pay back pay, punitive relief, and liquidated damages if the violation is shown to be willful.

In the EPA's "Declaration of Purpose," Congress wrote that sex-based pay discrimination:

Prevents maximum utilization of the available labor resources and tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening, affecting, and obstructing commerce; and

Constitutes an unfair method of competition.

These factors are just as relevant today as they were in the 1960s. The wage gap between men and women stubbornly remains despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act nearly 40 years ago. Women still do not receive equal pay for equal work, let alone equal pay for comparable work. This disparity not only affects women's spending power; it penalizes their retirement security by creating gaps in social security and pensions.

Some startling statistics

The General Accounting Office compiled data from the Current Population Survey regarding the ten industries that employ 71 percent of U.S. women workers and 73 percent of U.S. women managers. The pay gap between full-time working women and men managers widened between 1995 and 2000, in seven of the ten industries examined.

A full-time working woman currently receives only 73 cents to every dollar received by a man.

African-American women are paid only 65 cents for every dollar received by white men while Hispanic women are paid only 53 cents to the dollar.

Fifty-five percent of all women work in female-dominated jobs (jobs in which women comprise 70 percent or more of the workforce) whereas only 8.5 percent of all men work in these occupations. However, these men still receive about 20 percent more than women who work in female-dominated jobs.

Women are paid less in every occupational classification for which sufficient information is available, according to the data analysis in over 300 job classifications provided by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics.

In 1963, the year of the Equal Pay Act's passage, full-time working women were paid 59 cents on average to the dollar received by men, while in 2000 women were paid 73 cents for every dollar received by men. In other words, for the last 37 years, the wage gap has only narrowed by slightly more than one third of a penny per year.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Title VII also prohibits compensation discrimination on the basis of sex. Unlike the Equal Pay Act, however, Title VII does not require that the claimant's job be substantially equal to that of a higher paid person of the opposite sex or require the claimant to work in the same establishment.

If you have any questions, inquiries or desire representation with regard to any of these types of claims, please send your questions to rsneed@fosterfoster.com

For more information about:

• Age discrimination (ADEA)
• Disability discrimination and hostile work environment (ADA and Rehabilitation Act)
• Discrimination or hostile work environment based on race, color, sex, gender, national origin, ethnicity, or religion (Title VII)
• Employment contract disputes (dual) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and South Carolina Human Affairs Commission (SCHAC)
• Equal Pay Act (EPA)
• Family Medical Leave Act Claims (FMLA)
• Military leave laws (USERRA) and veteran discrimination (Sneed)
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
• Pregnancy discrimination
• Retaliation, whistleblower, and free speech violations (dual)
• Severance package review, layoff and reduction in force (RIF) agreement review and negotiation (dual)
• Sexual harassment and hostile work environment (Title VII)
• Wage disputes, including: overtime, minimum wage, bonus, and vacation issues Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the SC Wage Payment Act (dual)
• Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN)
• Wrongful discharge or wrongful termination in violation of public policy