Some women employees in Long Island may be paid less than their male coworkers for doing the same job. Despite the signing of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963, women still do not make the same amount of money as men. Equal Pay Day recognizes this with a celebration on April 10. This is the amount of time a woman has to work into the new year to make as much money as a man does during the year.
However, race adds an additional barrier for some women. Equal Pay Day does not arrive for African-American women until August 7 while for Native American women it is a month later, and for Latina women, it is on Nov. 1. For every dollar earned by men, white women earn $0.79. Black women earn $0.63, Native American women earn. $0.57 and Latina women earn $0.54.
There are a number of reasons these pay gaps exist, but overall, women tend to be in lower-paying jobs despite earning more college degrees than men. While 17 percent of the total workforce is women of color, they make up 33 percent of the low-wage jobs that are growing the fastest. Few women work at leading tech companies or as CEOs for Fortune 500 companies. Unconscious bias based on both race and gender may be responsible for some of these disparities.
In some cases, a person may be denied overtime and other forms of fair wages, and this may or may not be related to discrimination. Employees who are experiencing this or who believe they are being paid less than other employees when they have similar levels of experience and job descriptions might want to talk to an attorney about how to document the situation. The employee might want to file a claim based on wage and hour law.
