Woot! Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act Pass House!

Teaspoons ahoy! o.oP

This is such great news:

In the spring of 2007, the Supreme Court told Lilly Ledbetter, a twenty-year employee of Goodyear Tire in Alabama, that if she wanted to take legal action against the wage discrimination she had suffered, she should have filed a complaint within 180 days of the first discriminatory paycheck she received. Since she hadn't, she had no standing to recover decades of lost wages. The Supreme Court did not make it clear how Ledbetter was supposed to have known that she was being discriminated against after only 180 days on the job, seeing that Goodyear forbade employees from discussing their salaries, and Ledbetter only found out years later, thanks to an anonymous note.

Today Congress took a step toward correcting that injustice. The House passed both the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, restoring and establishing basic protections for employees who are subject to wage discrimination. The Ledbetter Act repeals the 180 day requirement, while the Paycheck Fairness Act protects employees from retaliation by employers if they bring complaints and allows them to sue for compensatory and punitive damages.

Both acts will now go to the Senate, where, if they pass (encourage your senators to vote for them here), they stand to become some of the first bills (soon-to-be-)President Obama will sign into law.

Let's all take a moment to remember how the totally sucktastic GOP nominee John McCain did not support this legislation, instead admonishing women to get more "education and training."

Still loving that he won't be our next president.