Progressive World Review

Wednesday, the Senate voted down a bill that would’ve made it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination.  The bill, introduced by Senator Kennedy, was an effort to counteract the ridiculous Supreme Court decision last year that limits a woman’s right to sue to 180 days after the discrimination is first alleged.  Because people don’t ordinarily discuss pay with coworkers, and are in fact usually discouraged from doing so by their employers, it can take years for pay discrimination to come to light making the 180 day limit unreasonable at best and a bad joke at worst.

The bill attempted to correct this by making the last paycheck the starting point for the 180 days.  The bill would have required 60 votes to pass the senate but only garnered 56 votes.  On a side note, I have seen no mention of why this or many other bills require 60 votes to pass rather than the 51 votes normally needed to gain a majority.  The reason for this is because every vote deemed important by Republicans faces an automatic filibuster which would then require 60 votes for cloture.  What is disturbing about this is that when the Republicans controlled the Senate they made a huge fuss whenever the Democrats threatened a filibuster even though it was a relatively rare occurrence.  But now that the Democrats are in charge, Republicans use the filibuster so often that it isn’t even mentioned anymore, it’s simply assumed that 60 votes will be needed to pass any bill of any particular significance.  Whenever the Democrats threatened a filibuster, Republicans would portray them as undemocratic for not allowing a “straight up or down vote” and the press would duly report it but now that the shoe is on the other foot, not a word is heard from the media.  They write about needing 60 votes to pass a bill as if this was always the way.

Absent from the vote was John McCain who opposed the measure stating,

I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what’s being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems,” the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. “This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system.”

This opinion is just as absurd as the Supreme Court’s decision that sparked this bill.  In the first place, complaints of frivolous law suits rings hollow due to the fact that most litigation in this country is from one business suing another.  And second, neither the Supreme Court’s decision nor the bill speaks to the validity of suing for equal pay but only the timing of the complaint.

This whole episode, including the Supreme Court’s decision, has far more to do than just women’s rights.  As important as that is, all working Americans are affected by pro business turn that all three branches of government have taken.  And while there’s not much we can do about the Supreme Court for now, we can decide who we will send to Congress to represent us and that just being a Democrat is not enough to qualify for the job.  And finally, the last person we need occupying the oval office is John McCain.

–Paul Wilden

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.