News
Ledbetter brings her inspirational story to Hamilton
By Sirianna Santacrose ’15
March 6, 2015
“From Wall Street to Main Street, white women earn 77 cents to ever dollar white men make for the same work,” Lilly Ledbetter declared to a captivated audience. “Women are outliving their spouses on average by ten years and most women don’t have enough for retirement.” Over the course of an hour, Ledbetter unfolded her personal experience with the injustice of unequal pay to a primarily female audience in the Chapel on Monday, March 2. Ledbetter was invited as the Days-Massolo Center’s Keynote Speaker.
Lilly Ledbetter began her fight for equal pay in 1998, when she received an anonymous note from a colleague at a Goodyear Tire factory in Alabama. She had worked as a night shift manager for nearly twenty years. That night, however, everything changed.
The note informed her that she was making significantly less than her male peers. “I couldn’t believe how little I made in comparison to my male counterparts,” Ledbetter recalled. No one discussed his or her pay at the time; doing so could result in losing one’s job. However, Ledbetter knew she could not remain silent. “Doing the right thing is not always easy,” she said.
She initially filed her case for unequal pay with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Birmingham. Nine months later, an EEOC representative called her back to tell her that her case was “one of the strongest they had ever seen.” However, the representative suggested she get an attorney to continue with the case. “If I start this, we will be in it for eight years,” Ledbetter told her husband. She was in for a fight.
With the support of her husband and family, Ledbetter found a lawyer and sued Goodyear for the 19 years and ten months of unfair pay she received for both regular and overtime hours. “They didn’t pay me what I was entitled to under the law,” Ledbetter said. “This was a total injustice.”
Although the district court in Alabama ruled in her favor, the 11th circuit federal appeals court overturned the court’s decision. The case went to federal trial in 2003, but the Supreme Court did not reach a verdict until May of 2007. The Court ruled in favor of Goodyear, citing that she had waited too long to file her complaint.
“They said I should have filed it back in the 80’s, but I didn’t know I was being underpaid at the time,” Ledbetter explained. However, she had attracted enough attention that she was able to take her fight to Capitol Hill. Friends and strangers alike donated money so that Ledbetter could pay for gas, parking and airfare back and forth from Alabama to Washington. Her husband was battling cancer at the time, so she attempted to go back and forth as much as possible. Despite the difficulty in her personal life, Ledbetter said, “I worked this case day in and day out like it was my job, because it was.”
Over the course of the next two years, Ledbetter worked tirelessly to gain the support of Congressmen from both sides of the aisle. When male congressmen openly opposed her mission, she reminded them to think of their wives and daughters. “This affects everybody that’s trying to struggle and make a living. It’s a family affair,” Ledbetter explained to her Hamilton audience.
A turning point for Ledbetter when she spoke at a press conference in Washington following her Supreme Court case. She was touched and energized by the presence of groups like the National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Law Center and the ACLU who came to support her. “This is so critical to make sure future generations are paid what they should be,” Ledbetter said. “I knew I had to share my story.”
The topic of equal pay played a major role in the 2008 presidential campaign, President Barack Obama promised to make passing a bill a priority. The Republican-controlled Congress initially rejected the proposed bill, sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski and Representative George Miller in April 2008. However, it was reintroduced to the Democratic Congress the following year and passed with a strong majority from both parties in the Senate. In January 2009, the act became the first bill signed into law by President Obama.
Looking back on the passing of the bill, Ledbetter said she was most proud of the fact that it was co-sponsored by Democrats and Republicans. “That was a great day because I knew that signing on that bill meant so much,” she recalled. The bill later became the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which resets the 180-day statute for filing a discriminatory act with each new paycheck. While laws are usually named after congresspeople, the Fair Pay Act honors Ledbetter’s persistence and devotion to her cause. “It was humbling,” Ledbetter said.
Though she originally thought unequal pay was just a problem in the South, this experience taught Ledbetter that this issue occurs across the U.S. and around the world. “The main thing I learned,” Ledbetter said Monday, “is not what happens to us but how we react and what we do about it… You have to be a strong individual to stand up to a corporation and go through something like this. You find out exactly who your real friends are.”
Ledbetter’s journey from a Goodyear night shift employee to a tireless proponent for equal pay rights for everyone has transformed not only her life but also brought a heightened awareness to this issue. “It’s still front page news when a woman gets a Fortune 500 or top management job,” Ledbetter reminded her audience. “We need more women in politics and on boards. Until we equalize and get more of you out there,” she added, “we’ll never gain true equality.”
Since the passing of the Fair Pay Act, Ledbetter published an autobiography entitled, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, was on the Colbert Report and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. She also announced that her story is currently being translated into a movie script for future release as a film.
In closing her talk, Ledbetter promised to open the floor for questions. “But first,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “I will tell you two things. I never found out who gave me the note, and no, I don’t buy Goodyear tires.” Audience members concurrently erupted in laughter and applause as they gave Ledbetter a standing ovation. Her leadership in the fight for equal pay is an inspiration to us all, and there is not doubt that Ledbetter’s legacy will be felt for many years to come.