Goodyear Tire and Rubber

What does Goodyear Tire and Rubber do when it hears of an injustice? It adds insult to injury, of course. Goodyear was recently on the winning end of a Supreme Court decision that sadly demonstrates how far right the Court has gone during the Bush Administration. The Court, voting 5-4, overturned an original ruling that awarded Lilly Ledbetter 3.5 million dollars for pay discrimination based on gender during her 19 years working at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. The legal grounds for this ruling is that despite the merit of her claim, she did not file her lawsuit within 180 days of when the discrimination occurred (her first short paycheck), as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To file a suit in this small window of time was not realistic for Ms. Ledbetter, as she did not discover the discrepancy in wages until years later, and it took years more to gather the necessary evidence.

As unjust as the ruling was, Goodyear decided to add further insult to the years of discrimination she faced, and sent her a bill for $3,165.20 to cover legal expenses related to the case. Ledbetter is worried about how she will manage to pay this bill, which happened to arrive the same week that her husband was scheduled to undergo surgery for cancer. This cruel and unnecessary act shows how some corporations treat people who try to obtain what is rightfully theirs: they use their infinite resources to beat them, and then take them for all they have—with the hope that no one will dare challenge them again.

Thankfully, not all of our elected officials are willing to let this type of discrimination continue. Not long after the ruling, the House of Representatives passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which allows a worker to file a suit within 180 days of any discriminatory paycheck. The Senate is set to take action on their version of the bill: The Fair Pay Restoration Act, introduced by Senator Kennedy, sometime in the Fall. As this is a Bill that Democrat’s have introduced to set right an obvious injustice, President Bush has threatened to veto it.