Lilly Ledbetter, a former factory manager in Alabama, has died at the age of 86. She became a symbol of the equal pay movement with lawsuits against employers that led to landmark pay discrimination legislation.
Ledbetter filed a lawsuit in 2007 after discovering that she was being paid less than men for the same job at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Alabama. The case ultimately failed, with the Supreme Court ruling that her case had come too late. . The court ruled that workers must file a lawsuit within six months of first receiving discriminatory pay — in Ledbetter's case, after she complained of the disparity in an anonymous letter. It was years before I knew it.
Two years later, former President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, giving workers the right to sue within 180 days of receiving discriminatory pay, not just their first paycheck. .
“Lily Ledbetter never set out to be a trailblazer or a celebrity. She just wanted to be paid the same as men for her hard work,” President Obama said in a statement Monday. Ta. “Lily did what many Americans have done before her: she set even higher goals for herself and for her children and grandchildren.”
Former Republican Washington Governor and U.S. Sen. Dan Evans dies at 98
Ms. Ledbetter died Saturday night surrounded by her loved ones after a brief illness, according to a brief statement from her family and an obituary sent by the team that made the film about her life. She has two children, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Ledbetter campaigned for equal pay throughout her life. Last week, she received the Future Is Female Lifetime Achievement Award from Advertising Week. A movie about Patricia Clarkson's life starring Patricia Clarkson. It premiered at the Hampton International Film Festival.
“Even though she lost the lawsuit and never made a penny, she was a tireless advocate for all of us,” said Equality Pay Today director and national campaigns director for Equal Rights Defenders. Deborah Vagins said.
“Once in a generation, we now encounter people who sacrifice everything for something, even if it doesn't benefit them.'' The Supreme Court's decision galvanizes Congress. added Begins, who met with Ledbetter shortly after her inauguration and introduced her to then-Senator Obama. Movement towards the later Ledbetter Act.
“She sparked a movement that forever changed the face of pay equity,” she said.
FILE – Lily Ledbetter looks to the audience as President Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 8, 2014, during an event commemorating Equal Pay Day. (AP Photo/Carolyn Custer, File)
Among those who paid tribute to Ledbetter was Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who said: on social media platform She said, “The simple but powerful words 'equal pay for equal work' changed my understanding forever.”
The movie “LILLY” production team Condolence statements on social media. “Playing Lily Ledbetter has been the privilege of my life,” Clarkson said in a statement.
In January, President Joe Biden 15th anniversary of enactment of law named after Ledbetter It includes new measures to close the gender pay gap, including new rules that prohibit the federal government from considering current or past salaries when determining pay.
Ledbetter and Begins supported the measure. In an opinion article in January In Ms. Magazine.
“Lilly's decades of relentless advocacy have inspired all of us and brought us closer to our nation's core values of equality and fairness,” Biden said in a statement Monday. .
But Ledbetter and other advocates have long pushed for more comprehensive legislation, especially the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963, including protecting workers from retaliation for wage disputes. I've been fighting.
Supporters' sense of crisis deepened after the incident. annual report Last month, the Census Bureau announced that the wage gap between men and women widened for the first time in 20 years. In 2023, full-time working women will earn 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, down from 84 cents in 2022. Even before that, supporters were frustrated by the lack of progress in reducing pay inequality. has been stagnant for the past 20 years Even though women are rising through the ranks of the C-suite and earning college degrees at a faster pace than men. Experts say the disparity persists for a number of reasons, including the underrepresentation of women in low-wage industries and weak child care systems that force many women to leave their careers during their most lucrative years. It is said that it is multifaceted.
In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Ledbetter I wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. She details the harassment she faced as a manager at a Goodyear factory and draws connections between sexual harassment and wage discrimination in the workplace.
Ledbetter worked at a factory in Gadsden, Alabama, for 19 years when she received an anonymous note saying she was being paid significantly less than three of her male co-workers.
Two years before she decided to retire, she filed a lawsuit in 1999 and initially won $3.8 million in back pay and damages from a federal court. After ultimately losing her case in the Supreme Court, she never received the money. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion, which said “the ball is in Congress's court,” motivated Ledbetter to continue fighting for better laws.
in 2021 Forbes Women's SummitMr. Ledbetter said one of his proudest accomplishments was the passage of the Ledbetter Act with bipartisan support.
Emily Martin, chief program officer at the National Women's Law Center, said the law set an important precedent “to not only commit to equal pay on the books, but to ensure we have the means to enforce the law.” . We worked closely with Ledbetter.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“She's really an inspiration to us that just because you lose doesn't mean you can't win,” Martin said. “We know her name because she lost and lost a lot of money. And she bounced back from that and worked until the day she died to turn that loss into real benefit for women across the country. I did.”
