If you are a woman, The Equal Pay Act protects you from being paid less than a man who performs a job of substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility. Tamara Holder can help you determine if your employer is engaging in gender-based pay discrimnation.
The Equal Pay Act requires that women are paid the same amount as men for equal work. But in 2020, men were still paid 17 cents more than women per hour for the same work. Although the Equal Pay Act of 1963 established equal pay for equal work as the law of the land, employers have used loopholes in the law to justify paying women less than men.
And although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on sex, which includes discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBTQ workers may still get paid less than heterosexual cisgender people doing the same kinds of jobs.
Equal pay lawyers know all the excuses for unequal pay for substantially similar work: seniority, “merit,” a claimed difference in the quality or the quantity of work, or “any factor other than sex,” including discriminatory working conditions. It’s remarkable, when a manager is questioned under oath, how porous these excuses for failing to provide equal pay for equal work can be. Tamara Holder loves to punch holes in the lame excuses for pay discrimination employers make when their true motivation is outright bias based on sex, including sexual orientation or gender identity.
The house of cards employers have built to excuse wage discrimination is starting to fall. Members of the US Women’s Soccer Team secured a multi-million-dollar settlement in their pay discrimination suit. Large companies like KPMG and Google have also paid millions in settlements, while lawsuits against Goldman Sachs and Sony Entertainment are ongoing.
This is good news for high-visibility women in large organizations, but the reality is that women are still paid an average of 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. Low-wage workers who are dependent on their jobs and fearful of retaliation can feel too powerless to demand fair pay.
If you and your coworkers are enduring wage discrimination, contact the Law Office of Tamara Holder, LLC, to discuss potential courses of action.
Employers that impose discriminatory working conditions, like disparities in temperature, ventilation, break rooms, uniforms, or parental leave as an excuse to pay less based on sex, may be breaking the law. If you are female or an LGBTQ person, and you are doing substantially similar work, requiring the same skills, with the same responsibilities, and in the same workplace as cisgender males but getting paid less for it, you may have a case for pay discrimination. Contact equal pay lawyer Tamara Holder today.
