Paycheck Fairness Act

PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2008)

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding and rise to oppose the amendment and in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Today, this House moves America's working women into the 21st century. And, in so doing, I believe it is important to place on the record the story of our mother, Anastasia, who when she began work back in the middle of the last century as a counter waitress as Liberty Lunch on Broadway in Toledo, Ohio did not even earn the minimum wage. That was made possible only by the Fair Labor Standards Act passed in 1938. But even when that Act passed, her boss would then cash her check and deduct the increase from her, and pocket it himself.

I am privileged that I now, as a Congresswoman, came from a family that did not spare its children the story of hardship and struggle that still characterizes the lives of millions of women in our country today. In passing this act, I do so in memory of our mother and millions and millions of American women who ask only to be treated fairly in the workplace and earn equal pay for equal work and get that check.

It is a commentary on the struggle of working people everywhere that it takes a Nation centuries to enact into law what is decent and right on the merits. Today we do what is morally right and economically just. Today we give America's working women a real dose of liberty.

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