The Democratic party and their president, Obama, have made a fetish of a law passed the first month they gained total control of Congress in 2009. The Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act.
To me this is grossly offensive.
I brought the first and most important employment diversity class action lawsuit against the Bank of California in 1971 with Robert Gnaizda as my lawyer and Public Advocates as my firm. This was the most powerful diversity lawsuit ever brought before or since. We got a consent order from a Federal Court which was then offered to every major bank, savings and loan and insurance company. Most big firms signed on to avoid suit against them.
It is because of this suit that the world of finance has, to this day, the most diverse employment population of any business category.
The Lilly Ledbetter law is a modification of the 1964 civil rights act that creates the right to sue a business based on discriminatory wage practices. In the original law the plaintiff had three months to sue after finding evidence of discrimination. With the Ledbetter amendment to the law, the three months begins after the last paycheck. The last paycheck can be decades after the discriminatory payment occurred.
The biggest problem with this issue is that there are virtually no discrimination cases brought solely on the basis of wage differentials for the past three decades. That was the nature of the early cases, particularly the one I brought. I had massive computer evidence with hundreds of examples.
The defense against such a discrimination case years or decades later is that personnel are no longer available for defense testimony. The company may have been sold one or more times in the interim. The company may have gone into bankruptcy and be unable to defend itself.
In general, the Ledbetter law is irrelevant and deeply flawed and is not directed at women, as the president falsely claimed.
It offends me to see a piece of trivia used as an argument for Obama and the Democratic parties support of women in the workplace.
To me this is grossly offensive.
It is because of this suit that the world of finance has, to this day, the most diverse employment population of any business category.
The Lilly Ledbetter law is a modification of the 1964 civil rights act that creates the right to sue a business based on discriminatory wage practices. In the original law the plaintiff had three months to sue after finding evidence of discrimination. With the Ledbetter amendment to the law, the three months begins after the last paycheck. The last paycheck can be decades after the discriminatory payment occurred.
The biggest problem with this issue is that there are virtually no discrimination cases brought solely on the basis of wage differentials for the past three decades. That was the nature of the early cases, particularly the one I brought. I had massive computer evidence with hundreds of examples.
The defense against such a discrimination case years or decades later is that personnel are no longer available for defense testimony. The company may have been sold one or more times in the interim. The company may have gone into bankruptcy and be unable to defend itself.
In general, the Ledbetter law is irrelevant and deeply flawed and is not directed at women, as the president falsely claimed.
It offends me to see a piece of trivia used as an argument for Obama and the Democratic parties support of women in the workplace.
