For Equal Pay Day, 9to5 Turns Up the Volume to End Wage Discrimination, Close the Pay Gap

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 22, 2009

Milwaukee, Wis. – On April 28, Equal Pay Day 2009, hundreds of members and activists will unite under the banner of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, raising awareness, hosting events, and speaking out to end the pay inequity and wage discrimination that, more than 45 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, continues to keep women and people of color from reaching greater economic self-sufficiency.

Equal Pay Day highlights the pay disparities between women and men, calling attention to the point in the year when women’s earnings finally catch up to those of men from the previous year. Statistics released in 2008 show that the longstanding gap between women’s and men's earnings has changed little. Overall, women earn about 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man. There’s an even larger gap for African American women and Latinas. 

“In this time of economic crisis, moving toward pay equity is more urgent than ever,” said Linda Meric, 9to5 National Executive Director. “We must ensure that women, who work hard on their jobs, often while they also carry a full load of family care-giving responsibilities, are fairly paid.  So we are speaking louder than ever; to elected officials, to employers, to each other.”

Here are some of the actions 9to5 members and activists will take on Equal Pay Day 2009:

In Denver, 9to5 leaders, elected officials and coalition partners – including members of the Colorado Pay Equity
Commission – will gather at the State Capitol to celebrate the recent public policy victory in the signing of the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. They will also hear the stories of women who have experienced wage discrimination and read a legislative resolution, signed by 70 members of the Colorado General Assembly, calling for an end to pay inequity in the state. In Atlanta, 9to5 members will distribute Know Your Rights fact sheets to hundreds of women, raising awareness about how workers can band together to correct pay inequity in their workplaces. 

Outside Milwaukee, in OshKosh, Wis., 9to5 and its coalition partners will convene a faculty-student-community
roundtable at the University of Wisconsin to discuss wage discrimination and ways to end it. In San Jose, 9to5 will
outreach to 2,000 high-schoolers, distributing bags containing 3/4-size cookies, representing how much women are missing in their paychecks because of the wage gap. In cities around the country, hundreds of 9to5 activists will send letters urging their U.S. Senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would protect workers who share wage information with one another and strengthen the penalties for violations of our existing equal pay laws.

“Pay equity for women has moved forward, not in cents, but in fractions of cents,” Meric said. “On this Equal Pay Day women speak together – clearly and forcefully -- to protect and expand our rights”

For more information on 9to5’s anti-discrimination and pay equity efforts, visit www.9to5.org.