Washington, DC – Rosie the Riveter had a very good day today.
In a signing ceremony at Rosie the Riveter State Park near San Francisco, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law today the strongest pay equity protection in the U.S. With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Brown smashed one of the biggest barriers to equal pay for work of equal value.
The California Fair Pay Act is a significant step forward toward eliminating gender and gender-race wage gaps. It prohibits retaliation against employees who share wage information with each other, and the law bars employers from paying employees less than the rates paid to employees of the opposite sex for substantially similar work, not just for exactly the same tasks or the exact same job title. In the real world, that’s how systemic under-payment of women happens.