Lilly Ledbetter and the persistence of discrimination

I met Lilly Ledbetter two weeks ago at a conference in Arizona where she was being honored. I was lucky enough to share lunch with her and talk.

If there was ever any doubt that she was an extraordinarily capable and dedicated employee for Goodyear, a brief meeting would dispel that immediately.

She's serious, smart, funny, and truly a reluctant activist. She didn't set out to change the laws governing employment discrimination lawsuits but the unfairness she discovered was so extreme and so far-reaching in its consequences that she had no choice. After almost 20 years working as a manager at a Goodyear plant in Alabama, she discovered (through an anonymous tip) that she was being paid only 87% of the salary paid to her lowest male counterpart and only 72% of that paid to her highest paid male counterpart--men working in the same jobs at the same level with comparable performance ratings to hers.

She sued, won huge damages in a lower court; Goodyear appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. Every appellate court confirmed the verdict, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court, which argued that she hadn't brought suit soon enough. The relevant law said she needed to sue within 180 days of the discriminatory pay practices being put into effect. This had been impossible, of course, because Ledbetter didn't know how grossly she was being mistreated until she'd spent nearly two decades in exemplary service to the company.

Her case prompted the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Obama after taking office: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gives plaintiffs a much longer window to bring suit.

Goodyear, however, has remained unrepentant, and since the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's damages award, Lilly will be suffering for the rest of her life from Goodyear's mistreatment.

As she explained when I met her, her contributions and Goodyear's matching contributions to her 401(k) were based on her salary all those years, as were the company's contributions to Social Security on her behalf. As a result, her total annual retirement income will be much lower than it would have been if she'd been fairly paid. And since she was paid so badly, she couldn't afford to save extra money for her waning years.

She now has health problems (the past few years have been extremely stressful, as you might imagine) but she still travels constantly to tell her story and to speak up for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is still to be passed.

She's an inspirational figure, and I for one will be boycotting Goodyear products from now on.