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Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the
Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20120626131413/http://archive.eeoc.gov:80/epa/anniversary/epa-40.html
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The Equal Pay Act Turns 40
President Kennedy Signs the Equal Pay Act, June 10, 1963.
Forty years ago, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy
signed the Equal Pay Act (EPA) into law, paving the way for the
long march toward equal opportunity in the workplace. At the time,
full-time working women were paid on average 59 cents to the dollar
earned by their male counterparts, according to government
data.
At the White House signing ceremony, President Kennedy said the
EPA:
"Adds to our laws another structure basic to
democracy" and "affirms our determination that when women
enter the labor force they will find equality in their pay
envelope."
The EPA is the oldest workplace civil rights law enforced by the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), predating
passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 by one full year.
Once enacted, the EPA was originally enforced by the U.S.
Department of Labor with jurisdiction being transferred to the EEOC
in 1979.
The EPA prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the
payment of wages or benefits, where men and women perform work of
similar skill, effort, and responsibility for the same employer
under similar working conditions. Under the EPA :
- It is unlawful for employers to reduce the wages of
either sex to equalize pay between men and women;
- A violation may occur where a different wage is paid to
a person who worked in the same job before or after an employee of
the opposite sex;
- A violation may also take place where a labor union
causes the employer to violate the law;
- An employer is permitted to base salary differences on
seniority, merit, and quantity or quality of production - in fact,
generally any other business-related factor, as long as it is not
based on a person's sex; and
- Employers found in violation of the EPA can be compelled
to pay back pay, punitive relief, and liquidated damages if the
violation is shown to be willful.
In the EPA's "Declaration of Purpose," Congress wrote that
sex-based pay discrimination:
- Depresses wages and living standards for employees
necessary for their health and efficiency;'
- Prevents maximum utilization of the available labor
resources and tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening,
affecting, and obstructing commerce; and
- Constitutes an unfair method of competition.
These factors are just as relevant today as they were in the
1960s.
See also:
This page was last modified on June 10, 2003.
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