SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT’S REPORT

Through Economy’s Gloom

The new law amends the federal statute of limitations to give workers like Lilly Ledbetter the ability to collect damages in such cases. Soon after signing the Fair Pay Restoration Act, President Obama repealed three anti-Union executive orders left over from the previous administration and established a Middle Class Task Force headed by Vice President Joseph Biden, a longtime friend of Labor.

Unions scored another major victory on Feb. 24, when the Senate voted 80-17 to confirm Hilda Solis as America’s new Secretary of Labor.

(See the article on page 8.) The former congresswoman from Southern California also is a proven friend of working people. There’s a lot more to do, of course, as Labor Unions and our newly empowered allies in the federal government focus on other urgent matters.

Chief among these is passing the Employee Free Choice Act. That bill, which was stalled by a filibuster last year, is key to removing the many obstacles confronted by millions of Americans who want to join Unions. If and when it reaches his desk, we can be sure that President Obama will sign the EFCA right away. It’s a new day in Washington, and while the economy’s overall outlook remains cloudy, the forecast is sunny for laws and policies that work for working people, not against them.

In the midst of all the unhappy news about the economy, we can take comfort in some recent developments in Washington, D.C. It was a proud moment on Jan. 29 when Lilly Ledbetter, a former employee of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Alabama, watched President Obama sign the law that bears her name. The ceremony marked Obama’s first signature enacting a law since he took the presidential oath on Jan. 20.

The scene, recorded in the accompanying  photograph by a White House photographer, brings home the fact that working people are no longer considered second-class Americans and are now welcome in the White House.

What a change that represents! The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act had been one of Labor’s top legislative priorities for more than a year.

It closes a loophole, opened by an unwise Supreme Court decision, that made it almost impossible for an employee to sue a company for years of illegal pay discrimination. Ledbetter had worked for Goodyear for almost 20 years before she learned she hadn’t been paid as much as male employees with similar jobs.

She sued the company for the difference in back pay. She won the case, but an appeals court ruled she had to act within 120 days of each discriminatory paycheck in order to collect.

Ledbetter appealed the decision, objecting that she didn’t know about the discrimination because the company kept it a secret. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to reject her appeal.

law empowers workers