Fight back Speaker pushes Vt. women to demand fair pay
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By SUSAN ALLEN Staff Writer - Published: October 18, 2009
RANDOLPH – In a rousing speech Saturday before about 350 women gathered for Vermont's 13th annual Women's Economic Opportunity Conference, advocate Lilly Ledbetter won a standing ovation after urging women to fight back in the face of injustice like the two decades of pay discrimination she experienced.
"When we get knocked down, do we stay down or get back up?" she asked the group, which included some men and filled the seats and much of the bleacher space in a gymnasium at Vermont Technical College. "Sometimes life throws us curveballs. … The true test is not what happens to us, but how we react to it."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Ledbetter to make the opening remarks at the daylong conference after working with her on a new equal-pay law. Leahy, who has helped organize all 13 of the conferences, said this year's was somewhat different given the recession facing all Vermonters, including women.
He said that in Vermont the median wage for men is $16.08 per hour, while women earn $13.82 per hour. "That's almost $5,000 a year less for female-headed households to take care of her family's needs," he told the crowd.
"Women should be paid the same as men," Leahy said in an interview. His wife, Marcelle Leahy, agreed, adding, "We can't let up."
Ledbetter, a petite woman with a southern drawl from her Alabama upbringing, took her pay discrimination fight against the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in Gadsden, Ala., all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she lost in 2007 on a 5-4 ruling based on an interpretation of the statute of limitations.
Undeterred, she shifted her efforts to Congress, where this year lawmakers passed what is called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, sending that bill to President Barack Obama – the first bill he signed into law. It clarifies the statute of limitations so people have more time to sue over pay discrimination.
"Lilly Ledbetter didn't do this by herself," she told the crowd. "I'm just proud to have my name on it."
She described her case, saying she was unaware she was being paid significantly less than her male counterparts at the plant throughout her 19-year tenure as a manager, during which she won one of the company's Top Performance Awards. But she came in for one night shift and found an anonymous note on a torn piece of paper listing the salaries of the four managers – Ledbetter was receiving $3,727 per month, compared with the $4,286 to $5,236 paid to the male managers, one of whom had been hired only the year before.
"I was very degraded," she said of her feelings after reading that note. "I felt less of a human being and less self-worth. I think my self-esteem hit the floor."
She said that over the course of that night shift, she thought about what those years of underpayment had cost her family financially, and would continue to cost them in terms of lost retirement pay. The next morning she approached her husband about the possibility of heading down to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office and filing a complaint, advising him that the process would take up to eight years and not be pleasant.
"He said, 'What time would you like to leave?'" she recalled, noting that her family supported her throughout the legal process.
She filed the complaint in 1998, and soon after an attorney took the case pro bono. In 2003 a jury in federal court ruled in favor of Ledbetter, awarding her $3.8 million. But, she said, a cap on awards in such cases kept the actual amount to $360,000 before taxes.
"I had faith in the legal system and it worked for Lilly Ledbetter all the way to the Supreme Court," she said. The high court, however, ruled against her in 2007 (during part of this period, Ledbetter's husband was suffering from cancer and she was accompanying him during 34 radiation and chemotherapy treatments).
Although speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 was one of the "highlights" of her life and Ledbetter worked in support of then-Democratic presidential nominee Obama, she told the room, "Equal pay and equal rights and civil rights … it's not Democrats or Republicans. It belongs to every single one (of us)."
The issue of equal pay will touch everyone's life at some point, Ledbetter said, adding, "If not now, someday."
When she came home one day in December 2008 and found her husband dead from a massive stroke, Ledbetter said, she suddenly found herself to be another statistic.
"My income dropped 50 percent in my household that day," she said. "We women normally outlive our spouses, and that creates another hardship. We can't support our households."
She said, however, that the process of fighting for equal pay and employment rights (black workers at the plant were also significantly underpaid and won higher wages) has been important for all women, including her own daughter and her granddaughter.
"When that door opened for Lilly Ledbetter and I lost in the Supreme Court, it not only hurt me and my family, it hurt every one of you," she told the crowd. "I became a poster child for equal pay and I liked that."
She said unequal pay for women and African-Americans "is a national epidemic."
She called on more women to aim for the top professionally and to serve on corporate boards. And, she urged the room, make the most of opportunities that come your way.
From a plant manager to lobbyist, advocate, author and public speaker, she said, "clearly, fate had other plans for this Alabama girl."
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