Unequal Pay Day

As Rep. Stacey Newman notes today in the Post-Dispatch, April 20 is "Equal Pay Day," which symbolizes "how far into 2010 women must work to earn what men earned in 2009."

The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that women who were full-time wage and salary workers in Missouri earned just 75% of the median income of their male counterparts.  The national average is about 80%.  The following chart compares the women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s.  

As a quick refresher, Sen. Kit Bond, Rep. Roy Blunt, Rep. Todd Akin, Rep. Sam Graves, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer all voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. That legislation was the first bill signed into law by President Obama, and makes it easier for workers to sue for decades-old discrimination.  Essentially, it nullified a Supreme Court decision that said workers had only 180 days to file a pay-discrimination lawsuit.