Pay Equity for Women: "This Means War!"

Ladies, put your lipstick on, square your shoulders, and get ready to do battle. This calls for a revolution!

That's a quote from Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), who is mightily pissed. The Ledbetter Bill, aka the Fair Pay Restoration Act (S. 1843), just failed by three votes to get the (God, not again) 60 votes it had to have to pass the Senate.

The bill is to bring justice to those women and minorities paid less than others for the same or very similar work. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (May 2007), a divided Supreme Court held that workers must sue for pay discrimination within 180 days after the first time they get paid for the work, no matter how long the unfair pay continues.

Mikulski, the senior female senator, is fit to be tied! She literally called for a revolution, said we should march in the streets. She quoted the famous admonition from Abigail Adams to her husband: "Do not forget the ladies." But Mikulski showed every scintilla of her Baltimore origins (I love a Balmer accent) as she demanded fairness and threatened to turn the wrath of women on the Republican minority.

When I turned on the TV, Senator Kennedy, even more red-faced than usual, was rightly castigating the minority for blocking this effort to overturn a bad decision by the SCOTUS. "Justice demands . . ." he said. "Simple fairness ... " he said. "A very bad mistake by the Supreme Court needs to be rectified . . ." he said (I'm paraphrasing).

Here's Sen. Mikulski's take on how ludicrous this ruling was. She quotes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dissented from the decision.

This was a bad decision by the Supreme Court. How many people know the salary of their co-workers, especially in the first six months that you’re on the job? What if you’re hired at an equal rate with your male counterpart but he gets a raise every few months and you don’t?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman on the Supreme Court, took the unusual step of reading her dissent from the bench. She said: ‘In our view, the court does not comprehend or is indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.’ Well, she was right.

Ladies? Anybody want to borrow a lipstick?