Obama tells Senate: Mind the gap, pass Paycheck Fairness Act

President Obama today called on the U.S. Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to close the pay gap that leaves women earning only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. He says the Paycheck Fairness Act is a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve….Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.

The bill would give employees the tools they need to close the wage gap between men and women and provide the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities. The U.S. House passed the bill last year.

Obama’s call to end the pay gap came as Vice President Joe Biden held the latest in a series of Middle Class Task Force meetings. Today’s focused on solutions for families who are balancing the dual demands of work and caring for family and the recommendations from the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.

Women make up nearly half of all workers on U.S. payrolls, and two-thirds of families with children are headed either by two working parents or by a single parent who works. But, says Biden:

the workplace has, for the most part, not changed to reflect these realities—and it must. Closing the gender pay gap, helping parents keep their jobs while balancing family responsibilities, and increasing workplace flexibility—these are not only women’s issues, they are issues of middle class economic security.

The Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force brings together the departments of Labor and Justice, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Personnel Management to develop ways to better enforce current equal pay laws and recommendations for new equal pay rules and laws. Its top recommendation is the Paycheck Fairness Act.

It also called for an employer education campaign on their obligations and an employee outreach on workers’ equal pay rights. Click here for more on the task force’s recommendations.

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), says the recommendations are welcome “not just because they bring attention to these issues,

but because they position them as what they are: bread-and-butter issues that are essential to the economic security and well-being of tens of millions of working families.

At a time when more women are in the workforce than ever, families increasingly rely on women’s wages, and elder care and other caregiving responsibilities are growing, we urgently need Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. –Mike Hall, Jul 20, 2010, AFL-CIO