Activist says women can’t support their families because of pay discrimination in the workplace
Former Goodyear Tire plant manager details her nine-year struggle to bring her case to the U.S. Supreme Court
With her thick Alabaman drawl, Lilly Ledbetter roused a crowd of several hundred people at Vermont Technical College in Randolph with stories from her 11-year battle to bring the issue of pay discrimination to the attention of the federal government.
In January, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, which gives workers who have been denied equal pay because of discriminatory business practices legal recourse to obtain a limited amount of back pay.
Ledbetter, a petite blond woman, could barely see over the podium, but her voice rang out in the VTC gymnasium at Vermont’s 13th Annual Women’s Economic Opportunity Conference as she spoke candidly about the nine years she spent fighting in the courts to obtain earnings she was denied from Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company because of her status as a woman.
Employed as a night shift supervisor in Goodyear’s Gadsen, Ala., plant, Ledbetter finished second among 150 mostly male trainees in electrical, pipefitting and maintenance coursework. She moved up through the ranks and was tapped for special management projects over the course of her 19-year career.
Weeks before her retirement, she was given an anonymous note that listed the salaries of her co-workers with the same position, title and less seniority. They were earning 35 to 40 percent more than she did.
“I learned one evening when I went in for a 12-hour shift how much less I was making,” Ledbetter said. “I can tell you I was very degraded.
“My retirement was based on a percentage of my pay. And I got exhausted thinking about how much my family had lost and the quality of education my children would have had.”
She filed gender and age discrimination charges with the Alabama Equal Employment Opportunity Council in 1998. Her attorney took the case pro bono and in 2003 an Alabama jury found she had been deprived of more $200,000 in back pay and awarded her $3.8 million. She received $360,000 because of a federal cap on the award.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the jury verdict in 2007. Ledbetter said the EEOC, which had championed her case up until that point, supported Goodyear’s allegations when the suit reached the Court.
“When I lost in the Supreme Court it didn’t hurt just my family, it hurt all of you,” Ledbetter said. “Women can’t support themselves on what they’re making. It’s not right because we’ve earned it. We’re legally entitled. I didn’t ask any employer to give me anything. Just treat me fair.”
In Vermont, the wage gap is significant. The median wage for Vermont women is $13.82 per hour, while the median for men is $16.08, or $5,000 more per year, according to a 2009 Vermont Commission on Women report.
