Public Employee Press

Equal pay NOW!

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

"Equal pay for equal work NOW!" is the message top city officials and union leaders sent loud and proud at DC 37's Women's History celebration March 25 at union headquarters.

"Women are paid 82 cents out of every dollar that men make in city government," said DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido. "It is time to end that practice."

DC 37 kicked off its pay equity campaign with its "Celebrate Women Organizing to Promote Pay Equity" event co-sponsored by the union's Latino Heritage and Women's committees chaired by Local 1549 Recording Secretary Carmen Flores and Local 957 President Walthene Primus.

"To stop the feminization of poverty and address pay inequity, we need to start with city agencies," said Public Advocate Letitia James. She will introduce legislation that would establish a committee on pay equity among city employees.

"We have the political power and will to insist and demand that women earn the same wages for the same job men do," said keynote speaker Laura Reyes, secretary-treasurer of DC 37's national union, AFSCME. "Equal pay is not just a women's issue, it's a family issue that over a lifetime cheats women and their children out of a huge portion of wealth and follows women into retirement."

Fifty years after the federal Equal Pay Act, women are still fighting for pay equity. Women are breadwinners for 42 percent of America's households, but earn 29 percent less than men, according to a 2013 Pew study.

Besides Reyes and James, the over 400 in attendance heard from a cadre of powerful elected officials and union leaders who stand with women to end pay disparity, including City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Finance Committee Chair Julissa Ferreras, state AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Terry Melvin, Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters President Regina Wilson, and others.

"Women are steered into lower paid jobs. A college education does not eliminate the wage gap," James said. "We cannot afford to wait another 50 years to be equal earners."