Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, may I add that my Fair Pay Act is an amendment to the Equal Pay Act, and not a separate act. One of the things it does is to add race and national origin to the Equal Pay Act. Mr. Speaker, I can see that there may be fewer jobs were the stereotyping about race and national origin happens to the extent that it happens to women, because low-paid jobs tend to be passed on from one ethnic group to another. But there certainly are some jobs, and those jobs should be reached under the Equal Pay Act, and they would be reached under the Fair Pay Act. I would like to address any concern about the way the Fair Pay Act might affect the market system. Not only are the safeguards I mentioned before there, that the burden is on the woman, the plaintiff, that she must show that the cause of the disparity is in fact gender and not some legitimate cause inherent in the market. But there is another reason to believe that comparable pay would not have a disruptive effect on our economy. A number of States, more than half a dozen, have done comparable-pay studies that affected their own State work forces, and some of them have indeed used those studies in order to raise the pay of women doing comparable jobs with men. So once again, the States have experienced and have shown that comparable pay can work. This remedy should be applied to others, as well.”