Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Pay Inequity On Obama Senate Staff

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber. The plant was in Gadsden, Alabama. She is credited with bringing a pay discrimination lawsuit. She claimed she made $6500 less per year than the lowest paid male supervisor. The Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit. She waited too long to file it.

Barack Obama, running for the President of the United States as the agent of hope and change, voted in support of legislation of equal pay in April. He boasts of his position even today on the campaign stump and during his well delivered teleprompted speeches.

"Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice cold not be clearer," Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. "It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family's income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You'd think that Washington would be united in its determination to fight for equal pay." Obama uttered those words just last week.

Today on CNSNews.com, some stubborn facts emerge. The women working in Obama's Senate office are paid at least $6,000 less than the average man working for the agent of hope and change. This data comes from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, covering a six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Five people are paid $100,000 or more annually by the Senator and only one - his administrative manager - is a woman.

Just the secretary.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama's staff was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff was $48,729.91. The report shows only one paid intern during this period, a male.

Senator McCain employed 69 people during this period. 23 were, however, interns. Of the non-interns, 30 were women and 16 were men. The average pay for the non-intern women was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern men were paid, on average, $56,628.83.

The problem, said Obama in that speech in New Mexico of Lilly Ledbetter, "was that her employer paid her less than men doing the exact same work."

Imagine that.

Still looking for that hope of change.

4 comments:

Paul is a Hermit said...

More information that will never reach the voters. It just will not do for the media to disparage the designated Alpha Male. Hahaha, sorry, I crack me up.
Obama is in the party of do as we say, not as we do.

Karen Townsend said...

Paul,
Yeah. I love being lectured to and finger pointed at by a nose up in the air hypocrite.

Beverly said...

I did, in fact, read that somewhere on the net. Maybe it was on Fox News.

When I listen to O's commercials that are coming out now, I find them sickening.

The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

More information that will never reach the voters.

Hence, the importance of alternative media sources, networking and pushing it into the mainstream consciousness to be talked about.