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The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in an Alabama case that underscores just how pay discrimination works against women. It works very well, thank you.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court found that a female employee at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., doesn’t have the right to sue for the same pay as a man doing the same job if she waits longer than 180 days to file her claim from the time the discrepancy occurs.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote found that employers would not be able to defend against claims ‘’arising from employment decisions that are long past.'’

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing in dissent for the court’s liberal members, urged Congress to amend the law to correct the court’s ‘’parsimonious reading'’ of it.
Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 to her retirement in 1998. For most of that time she worked as an area manager. Initially, her salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. But over the years her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less experience. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only female area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was clear.

She was paid $3,727 per month. Compare that to the lowest paid male area manager’s $4,286 per month, or the highest paid male’s $5,236.
Contrary to the judgment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sided with Ledbetter in the claim she brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Bush-appointed Supreme Court majority sided with Goodyear. An unhappy Justice Ginsburg wrote that the discrimination in this case was “unambiguous.”
You can read the case at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1074.pdf

There are many reasons why an employee might go past the federal 180-day time limit for bringing a pay discrimination suit.
First, it is hard to sue until you find out there is a pay discrepancy. You might not know it for many years, since most employees don’t show each other their pay stubs. But remember, the wording of the federal law states you must file a claim within 180 days of the discriminatory act occuring. Ledbetter went for years from the time her pay slipped behind that of men, as would most of us, because she didn’t know.

Let’s say one does know about the discrimination: It often is hard to sue when you have young children and you want to keep your job at the biggest or only plant in town. Or, if you leave the job, you might fear retaliation against a family member who is still working at the plant. The reason might simply be lack of sophistication about the legal system or indecision.
I don’t know for certain what combination of reasons caused her to file well after the federal deadline, but what I do know is that this High Court, led by Sam Alito (a Bush appointee) ruled on a technicality and not on the spirit of the law. They failed to protect a working class woman, even though they had all the undisputable facts before them to show pay records at Goodyear.
I propose that we, the people, enforce a little grassroots justice of our own. I propose that people of conscience send emails or letters to Goodyear and tell the tire maker that you will not be buying any more of their products. We can quite easily ride on Michelins and BF Goodrich tires for the rest of our driving days.
In other words, vote with your checkbooks. It won’t help Lily Ledbetter get her back pay, but it might send a message to Goodyear that there’s more than one kind of justice.

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