Jon S. Corzine: “I stand today to speak in support of an issue that affects every woman in this country--the fight for equal pay for men…”

“I stand today to speak in support of an issue that affects every woman in this country--the fight for equal pay for men and women. Today is Equal Pay Day--the day when the wages paid to American women ``catch up'' to the wages paid to men last year. So, essentially, women have to work almost four months more than men who do the same job just to bring home the same amount of income. Until the early 1960s, newspapers published separate want-ads for men and women. Some newspapers even printed the same job in the male and female listings, but with separate pay scales. Full-time working women would earn on average between 59-64 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned doing the exact same job. Finally, in 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act making it illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of gender. Since its passage, we have made significant progress in the fight for equal pay. Women now earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same position. While we have improved over the last 40 years, however, we still have a long way to go. Apparently this Administration, however, thinks we can stop fighting for equal pay. The Department of Labor quietly eliminated its Equal Pay Matters Initiative, removed all information about narrowing the wage gap from its Web site, and refused to use available tools to identify violations of equal pay laws.…”