In response to recent comments by State Senator Marty Golden about Golden's etiquette class for women being his solution to help women in the workforce, Bay Ridge Attorney and Democratic State Senate candidate Andrew Gounardes called on Golden to explain his "no" vote on the New York State Fair Pay Act in 2011, an "equal pay for equal work" a bill that has repeatedly been passed by the State Assembly, including April this year.
"Somehow, in the year 2012, there are still women across New York who earn less than men do for the same work. It's sad. It's wrong. And it's time for every one of us to stop looking the other way and to start doing something about it," Gounardes said. Furthermore, Gounardes pointed to Golden's "no" vote as another example of how out-of-touch Golden has become, "in this day and age, it's hard to believe that anybody thinks a woman should be paid less than a man for the same job."
Fair pay has been a recurring theme in Gounardes's campaign to unseat State Senator Marty Golden. In 2011, Golden voted against equal pay for equal work, saying simply that it was too costly to adopt. It was reintroduced into the Civil Service and Pensions committee, which Senator Golden chairs, but stalled there. "If Senator Golden and his buddies in Albany were truly representing their constituents, they would not only have voted for the bill," Gounardes added, "but would be leading the charge to see it pass!"
According to the National Women's Law Center, the average woman working full time in New York State earns 83 cents to every dollar that a man makes for the same job. For Hispanic women, that number drops to a shocking 55 cents. In 1963 and in 2009, the United States Congress passed two bills that made it illegal to discriminate against women by paying them less than men. But loopholes at the state level have prevented fair pay from becoming a reality for many.
