First, read this if you missed it last week.
The bill to repeal Wisconsin's equal-pay-for-equal-work law was introduced in the state Senate last September by Sen. Glenn Grothman (R) of West Bend, a small city northeast of Milwaukee. (The link takes you to his web page, which includes his email address, his snail mail address, his telephone and fax numbers, plus his office address in Madison. Just in case, ya know, you wanted to let him know your feelings on the matter.) It was passed in the Senate with the vote coming down -- predictably -- along party lines; the same thing happened in the state Assembly last month.
Of course, there are still federal laws on discrimination and equal pay, etc., but this bill makes it impossible to file a wage discrimination suit in state court. A petitioner will now have to file in (an overburdened) federal court. Says State Senator Tammy Baldwin here,
"It is much easier for somebody who's been unfairly compensated to gain access to a state court than a federal court...It is something that if you want these laws to have meaning, they have to be enforceable. So I'm very disappointed with the Wisconsin state legislature. Yet another big step back for women. This is becoming a real pattern."
As far as I can tell, there are exactly two (2!) federal courts in the state of Wisconsin, one in Milwaukee (a seven hour drive from where I live) and one in Madison (a six-hour drive). There are 69 state courts in Wisconsin, one in all but three counties: the one in my county is exactly 6.7 (highway) miles away. That tells you how easy or difficult it is to file a wage discrimination suit this month vs. last month.
Hmmmph. If these people want to live in a Third World country*, why don't they MOVE to a Third World county... instead of trying to remake my state into one.
*I was going to suggest Mississippi, but that would have been unfair to Mississippi.
Edited to add: The federal law, The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (1963! I bet a number of you were not even born yet in 1963!), says this:
"No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions..."
