Pelosi in New Haven
Speaker of the House appears in New Haven with Rep. DeLauro
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is optimistic the current Congress will extend protections for pay equity despite numerous challenges facing the movement, the congresswoman said Saturday at a forum in New Haven.
NEW HAVEN – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is optimistic the current Congress will extend protections for pay equity despite numerous challenges facing the movement, like the widespread pushback against organized labor and racist and sexist attitudes still held by many in the workplace and government, the congresswoman said Saturday in New Haven.
Pelosi visited Gateway Community College on Saturday morning with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, for a conversation on equal pay for equal work, and the progress made earlier this year by Democratic members of the House of Representatives to pass DeLauro’s Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would end pay secrecy, force employers to justify pay disparities and address other weaknesses in the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
The Republican party holds the Senate, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has called
himself the “grim reaper” of all progressive bills that would cross the Senate floor. But Pelosi and DeLauro said they expect the Paycheck Fairness Act to pass.
“We think it’s inevitable. Some people think it’s inconceivable,” Pelosi said. “We want to shorten the distance between the two.”
“Our hope is that there will be a dynamic in the Senate,” DeLauro added. “… This issue is now one that is part of the public discourse and at the center of our conversations, and that ought to be the impetus for the passage of this bill in the Senate.”
One of the biggest threats facing the effort is that “all union activities are under assault,” Pelosi said.
Only 10.7 percent of U.S. workers are represented by unions, including only 6.4 percent of private sector workers, according to labor statistics, and wages have been stagnant for U.S. workers for about 40 years, Pew Research shows.
Anti-union groups have sprouted across the country.
By diminishing the use of collective bargaining, “the powers that be” are working to exploit women and people of color, and reversing the labor victories that workers fought for years ago, she said.
“We are having a fight labor unions won 100 years ago,” Pelosi said. “If you increase disparity and inequality in America, you are undermining the middle class, and you are therefore undermining Democracy.
“The middle class of America has a union label on it.”
Pelosi also listened to the stories of women like Brittney Yancy, a Goodwin College professor and ambassador to the United State of Women, a gender equality organization. As a black woman, Yancy told the audience how racism and discrimination have hampered her education and career, and how she’s burdened by worries about the pay gap for women of color.
Nationally, black women make 61 cents for every dollar paid to white men, a disparity that Pelosi called “an exploitation.”
But Yancy, a doctoral candidate, will try not to think about that gap, or her six-figure debt, when she walks across the stage to graduate in May, she told Pelosi, DeLauro and the crowd.
Instead, Yancy will think of her great-grandmother Betsy Abrams, who did domestic work for a white family. And Yancy will think of her own mother, who spent most of her first five years playing in that white family’s basement, alone, while Abrams cleaned the house and cooked and cared for the family’s children.
Yancy said in the conversation about women’s successes, and the progress they’re still fighting for, it’s crucial to remember those who weren’t afforded the same opportunities.
“I want to bring them into this space because theirs are the shoulders that I stand on,” she said.
Along with securing equal pay for equal work, Pelosi and DeLauro discussed their efforts to increase opportunities for women who want to be leaders and business owners.
For years, the number of women-owned businesses has grown at a faster rate than companies overall. The number of black women-owned businesses have grown faster than any other group, according to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Business Report.
The House’s agenda has also included removing barriers to health care, like lowering the cost of prescriptions and removing the pre-existing condition label from things like pregnancy, fertility treatments and counseling for domestic violence. This work has been possible not only because the House has a Democratic majority but because it now has 106 women, its highest number in U.S. history, DeLauro noted.
“It makes a difference who is in charge for what legislation is able to get passed,” she said.
Before the last election, when a record-number of women were running for Congress, some male legislators asked sexist questions like, “Who said she could run?” and “Why don’t the women just write a list of things they want done and we’ll do them?” Pelosi recalled.
“Poor babies,” she said. “This is this century, in the 2000s. This is nothing ancient. That’s why I have my suffragettes colors today,” referring to her crisp, white suit.
But Pelosi said she thinks activists, lawmakers and workers will overcome that kind of attitude.
“I think we have an opportunity to cross a threshold if we all stick together to do so.”