ORONO, Maine — Lilly Ledbetter, the woman who took Goodyear Tire and Rubber to the U.S. Supreme Court after discovering she had been underpaid for nearly 20 years of work, told a group of women gathered for a six-day conference to fight for equal pay and stand strong in the face of challenges.
Ledbetter, 74, of Jacksonville, Ala., delivered the keynote speech Saturday evening at this year’s Maine NEW Leadership conference during a dinner at the Penobscot Valley Country Club.
“I had a plan that I would work hard, raise my family, save, and when retirement came I’d enjoy the rest of my life,” Ledbetter said. “But it didn’t work out that way.”
Ledbetter worked 19 years at Goodyear, supervising mostly male workers in a radial tire division.
“It was a great job for a woman,” Ledbetter said. “But I told the young people here today that I don’t understand why we talk about women’s jobs and men’s jobs, because they’re jobs. If the person is capable, has the training, the background, they should be hired.”
In 1998, an individual who has never been identified left a note in Ledbetter’s mailbox. The note included the names of several male employees who held the same position as Ledbetter for the same or a shorter duration. Ledbetter was making $3,727 per month, whereas the men were making between $4,286 and $5,236.
Ledbetter also missed out on retirement and other contributions that are based on wages. She said she was frustrated and angered by the thought of how much her family missed out on over the years because she made so much less than her peers.
“I thought about all those times that we struggled and we had to dig deep to make the mortgage, pay college tuition, pay the dental bill, to make the car payment,” she said, adding that her family missed out on vacations, eating out and other luxuries the men could probably enjoy because of their higher salaries.
After finding she was being short-changed, Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1998. Nine years later, the U.S. Supreme Court decided by a one-vote margin against Ledbetter because she filed her claim more than 180 days after receiving her first paycheck.
That decision led to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which stated that the 180-day statute of limitations resets every time an individual receives a discriminatory paycheck.
“When you start out making less money, you can never catch up,” Ledbetter said. She urged the women to negotiate their starting pay when they get new jobs so they aren’t left behind.
Ledbetter also urged the women in attendance to use their right to vote and research politicians to find candidates who will represent them well.
“We know that women are still only earning 77 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same work,” said Mary Cathcart, a senior policy fellow at UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and co-director of Maine NEW Leadership. Cathcart argued women need to be more willing to push for equal pay and need to consider how unfair pay levels might affect their futures.
Twenty-nine participants from 18 different institutions who either recently graduated or are attending college are taking part in the program, according to Cathcart.
The NEW conference is part of a national network that started at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The Maine program, sponsored by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, has been in place since 2008.
It is designed to address the historic and contemporary underrepresentation of women in politics. The six-day program, which began Friday, offers participants interactive sessions on leadership development, networking, diversity training and the realities of holding office. It is taking place on the University of Maine campus, where students and faculty stay together at the Doris Twitchell Allen Village. Off-campus activities include visits to the State House and Margaret Chase Smith’s home and library in Skowhegan.
BDN reporter Judy Harrison contributed to this report.
So, is this paid for by the taxpayers? Bet the attendees are UMO employed!
Margaret Chase Smith was a Republican; Mary Cathcart is a Democrat–never the twain shall meet?
Chase Smith was nothing close to resembling today’s Republican.
How true, Margaret Chase Smith was very much unlike today’s Tea Party Parrot Republicans. She was honest, had pride in Maine and stood for decency
I recently saw Lilly Ledbetter’s presentation on CSPAN. Her story attacked Judges Alito and Roberts; it seemed that they had foolishly found against her. In ten minutes of reading I discovered that Lilly Ledbetter had blatantly lied on CSPAN. She had discovered that she was paid less than the men six years earlier according to her own testimony (contrary to what she said on CSPAN.) She had originally been paid the same as the men but had a string of negative performance reviews. She waited until she was ready to retire – and after one of her supervisors had died – to file suit. There’s more to the case than meets the eye. One thing is sure – she’s misrepresenting the facts of the case. Second, she started out being paid the same and only earned less because she repeatedly performed poorly, according to those who reviewed her, and she missed many potential pay increases. Perhaps she was fortunate to not having been replaced. She was being paid less due to her alleged, inferior performance. Years later it’s tough to tell, which is why the law required that she take action within 180 days of discovering a problem. That she continued to work until retirement and has directly lied on CSPAN tells me something.
Lily Ledbetter won her case in a court of law which reviewed all the information about her performance. She did not have negative performance reviews.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was unfair because, for many years, she did know that she was underpaid relative to men.
How many of us know what we are paid compared to others who do the same job?
I’ve searched multiple legal websites dealing with major court cases and/or Supreme Court cases (I’m not a lawyer and don’t play one on tv); they all refer to evaluations – such as the Cornell Law site. Lilly won a court case, which was overturned on appeal, and she later lost at the Supreme Court where the issues dealt with what happened within the 180 day window when she filed. She wasn’t discriminated against during the 180 day window. She couldn’t argue successfully about what had happened earlier because it wasn’t within 180 days. Another approach was limited because in an earlier deposition she acknowledged that she was concerned about pay discrimination in 1992. Today she denies this fact because it ruins her story. That in the words of H. Ross Perot is where the rubber meets the road.
She was awarded 3.8 million by a lower court. As I understand the turnout of the Supreme courts ruling, they did not dispute that she was discriminated against, rather 5 of the 4 justices of the supreme court asserted, among other things, that the stipulation of the statute of limitations nullified her standing. Had one justice voted the other way, she would have won. I don’t believe any of those justices claimed she was untruthful.
Maine65, I am sorry to say this, but your criticism doesn’t stand to reason given the facts. I also find it unfortunate that people who comment here are not required to use their real names. With such a requirement, perhaps contributions would be better thought out.
BJ Kitchen – Ledbetter on CSPAN indicated that Alito and Roberts were stupidly maintaining that she would have had to complain about the discrimination before she had actually learned about the alleged discrimination. That seemed so odd that I looked up the case to try to understand why Alito and Roberts held such a ridiculous position. I found that what Ledbetter hadn’t disclosed, in fact lied about, on CSPAN is that she knew in 1992 and not 1998. When one accounts for this fact everything makes sense.
Lilly Ledbetter will be well-off lying to biased audiences eager to confirm their own worldview.
Maine65 – The argument you have made is not sound or supported with verifiable references, beyond the allusion to some CNN comment. The goal of the argument seems somewhat zealously motivated to malign Ledbetter, which I find somewhat dubious (Goodyear rep maybe?).
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court. Simply put, Alito asserted that the first discriminatory act was committed with the first pay check and since Ledbetter is presumed to have abandoned her claim because she did not file an EEOC charge within the SOL (statute of limitations per se), she can not challenge Goodyear’s alleged unlawful employment practice in court. In other words, she has no standing.It might be helpful to simply read the supreme court’s opinion on this matter. You can do so here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1074.ZO.html
Upon review of this opinion, one ought to understand why Ledbetter thought Alito’s argument was foolish and unfair, albiet an apparently legally defensible opinion, given presidence. However, it is very disconcerting and it hardly seems logical to perpetuate a legal institution that protects the contradiction of upholding justice on the one hand while also protecting injustice on the other. Wouldn’t you agree? Unless of course you are the perpetrator of the injustice, then the institution is a handy tool. >.<
if women worked equal as a man…then yes equal pay
Ledbetter is absolutely right but because she’s a women she will be attacked and because she is critical of a big corporation she will be attacked and because she is standing up for herself as a worker she will be attacked and there is something very wrong in our society because she will be attacked for all these things.
Did you even bother reading Maine65’s post? Research it and you’ll find that they are correct, but then again, why let facts get in the way of your rant. Sorry, but I just can’t imagine being so dishonest with myself.
Get the facts SpruceDweller.
Now, I am not denying that women are paid less then men, but here is what I do not understand. Almost every company/business has predetermined scales/grades for every position based upon qualifications. So, regardless of sex/race/sexual orientation your pay is determined by things such as years experience, college, training, etc.
Also, we like to believe that correlation is causation, thus if you take the average womans salary and the average mans salary and see that one is less than the other, you automatically assume that it is because of their gender. In the case of salary negotiations, I have seen studies in which they determined that in cases where women are paid less it is almost always because women have a tendency to be less aggressive than men during salary negotiations.
So in other words, very rarely is it ever “you’re a women so therefore I must to pay you slightly less than your male counterpart because women do not have a place in the workplace and this is my way to show it.”