WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Fairness Act today, landmark legislation to close loopholes and strengthen the 1963 Equal Pay Act, including providing effective remedies for women who are not being paid equally for equal work.

“The sad reality is that Alabama has one of the largest pay gaps in the country. Equal pay, though, is not just a women’s issue – it is an economic issue. When women in Alabama earn just 76 cents for every dollar paid to men, it costs the state economy more than $11 billion every year,” U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell  (AL-07) said. "America succeeds when women succeed. It’s past time to do what is right and ensure women receive equal pay for an equal day’s work.”

Throughout the U.S., 56 years after the enactment of the Equal Pay Act, full-time working women still earn just 80 cents, on average, for every dollar a man earns, amounting to a yearly gap of $10,169 between full-time working men and women. In Alabama, the wage gap is even larger – 76 cents on the dollar, amounting to an annual gap of $10,747. The numbers are even more concerning for minority women: Black women are paid 57 cents, Hispanic women are paid 49 cents and Asian women are paid 72 cents for every dollar paid to white men in Alabama.

Eliminating the wage gap would provide much-needed income to the more than 271,000 Alabama households that are headed by women, nearly 100,000 of which have incomes that fall below the poverty level. If the wage gap were eliminated, Alabama working women could provide more than 26 additional months of child care, nearly 15 more months of rent, approximately 1.6 years’ worth of food for her family and 9.6 more months of mortgage and utilities payments.

Specifically, the Paycheck Fairness Act:

• Requires employers to prove that pay disparities exist for legitimate, job-related reasons.  In doing so, it ensures that employers who try to justify paying a man more than a woman for the same job must show the disparity is not sex-based, but job-related and necessary.
• Bans retaliation against workers who voluntarily discuss or disclose their wages.
• Ensures women can receive the same robust remedies for sex-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subjected to discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
• Removes obstacles in the Equal Pay Act to facilitate a wronged worker’s participation in class action lawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination.
• Makes improvements in the Department of Labor’s tools for enforcing the Equal Pay Act.
• Provides assistance to all businesses to help them with their equal pay practices, recognizes excellence in pay practices by businesses, and empowers women and girls by creating a negotiation skills training program.
• Prohibits employers from relying on salary history in determining future pay, so that pay discrimination does not follow women from job to job.