Lilly Ledbetter

Lilly Ledbetter, Equal Pay Advocate

Lilly Ledbetter on her battle to achieve equal pay for women nationwide.

Lilly Ledbetter

Equal Pay Advocate

Ledbetter shares the story of her battle to achieve equal pay for women nationwide. Her crusade to remedy the gender-based pay discrimination that she suffered received national attention and her activism led to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009.

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Lilly Ledbetter worked as an area manager at Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Alabama for nineteen years. Her crusade to remedy the gender-based pay discrimination that she suffered during that time received national attention, and her activism led to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. Ledbetter grew up in rural Alabama and began working in her grandfather’s cotton fields while she was a teenager. She married Sergeant Major Charles Ledbetter and had two children. In 1979, she took a job as an overnight shift manager and area manager at the local Goodyear plant. As part of her contract, Ledbetter was forbidden to discuss the details of her pay with other employees. As she approached retirement in 1998, however, an anonymous tipster alerted her to an alarming fact: despite receiving a “Top Performer” award in 1996, she had been making far less than her male colleagues for the entirety of her employment at Goodyear. Outraged, Ledbetter made a formal complaint against Goodyear with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. After the company tried to discipline her by assigning her to manual labor, Ledbetter filed a discrimination suit and was awarded approximately $3.3 million in damages (later reduced to $360,000 because of a law limiting a company's liability for damages.) Goodyear, however, appealed and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in favor of the tire-maker, saying that Ledbetter had missed the statute of limitations (then, only 180 days from her first unequal paycheck) to file a discrimination suit. Although she never received any compensation for the discrimination she faced, Ledbetter fought to pass legislation ensuring that other women would not have to deal with the same inequities she had. In 2009, President Barack Obama made the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act the first piece of official legislation that he signed upon taking office. The bill revises previous legislation and states that the 180-day statute of limitations resets with each new paycheck affected by discriminatory action, giving plaintiffs more time to file their claims.

LILLY LEDBETTER: It was so embarrassing to me to have to go in and sound like a whiner, a complainer, and to say, "They don't treat me fair."

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Working for Goodyear, the management job was an excellent job for a woman. It was hard. It was dirty. But it was still a good manager's job. In '96, I was given the top performance award based on my record.

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And when I looked and saw how much those men were making, it was so devastating. So humiliating. I don't think I've ever had a lower feeling in my whole life. So I put the note in my pocket, and I continued on my shift. And about halfway through the night, it hit me. All of my retirements, all of my savings, everything that I had tried to do for the future was short-changed. So we ended up in federal court in January of 2003.

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "These people don't understand what it's like in the real world." And they don't. People don't stand around water coolers discussing their pay. She said, "The ball is in Congress' court, and I challenge them to do something about this great injustice." And they did.

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Walking down that red carpet with the president was an answer to some prayers, because I feel like that my young granddaughter and the women that my grandsons will someday marry, that they will have a better opportunity. And that's what it will take, is equal pay for equal work.

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