Paid Worker Role and Health 459
cases. In 2009, President Obama signed into
law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration
Act (CNN Politics, 2009). This legislation
was developed in response to a lawsuit filed
by Lilly Ledbetter in 1998 claiming that she
was paid less than men for comparable work
at Goodyear Tire and Rubber. After working
for Goodyear for 19 years, Ledbetter learned
that she had been paid less than men for
comparable work. Although the jury ruled in
her favor, the claim was later overturned by a
federal appeals court on the basis that she did
not file the claim within six months of receipt
of the first paycheck showing she was paid
less than men. (How it is that people are sup-
posed to learn that they are not receiving fair
pay within their first six months of employ-
ment is not clear to me!) The 2007 Supreme
Court also rejected her claim—again not
because they denied she suffered discrimi-
nation but because the claim was filed more
than six months after the initial discrimina-
tory paycheck. With the Ledbetter Fair Pay
Restoration Act, people can sue employers
for discrimination as long as the complaint
is filed within six months of the most recent
discriminatory paycheck.
Theglass ceilingis a form of treatment
discrimination that refers to barriers to the
advancement of women and minorities in
organizations. The glass ceiling is illustrated
by the fact that only 15 Fortune 500 compa-
nies were run by women in 2010. The glass
ceiling is also illustrated by the fact that we
have not had a female president of the United
States. When Hillary Clinton realized that
Barack Obama would receive the Democratic
nomination for the president of the United
States, she withdrew from the race by pro-
claiming that there were 18 million cracks in
the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” signifying
the 18 million people who had voted for her
in the primaries (NewYorkTimes, 2008).
$47 million settlement. This was the largest
national sex discrimination case in the his-
tory of the United States for a company of this
size (13,000 employees; 2,300 stores). Rent-
A-Center was charged with not hiring ap-
plicants because they were women and firing
employees who were female. The class action
suit was brought on behalf of 5,300 women
and thousands of rejected job applicants.
One approach to access discrimination is
affirmative action. However, affirmative action
policies are controversial. Proponents argue that
affirmative action remedies deficits in the past
due to discrimination by giving underrepre-
sented persons more of an opportunity. Oppo-
nents are concerned that underqualified persons
receive jobs, which then disadvantage more
qualified applicants. The issue is far from re-
solved. Interestingly, a laboratory study showed
that affirmative action benefited men more than
women (Ng & Wiesner, 2007). When a male ap-
plied for a position as a nurse, he was more likely
to be hired in the presence of an affirmative ac-
tion policy even if he was less qualified than the
female—people’s fears confirmed! By contrast,
when a woman applied for a police officer posi-
tion, she was more likely to be hired only when
she was equally or more qualified than the male.
Treatment discrimination occurs after
the person has the job and takes the form of
reduced salary or reduced opportunities for
promotion. In 2004, the largest class action suit
regarding treatment discrimination of women
was brought against Wal-Mart. Women earned
less than men in the same positions and were
less likely than men to be promoted, despite
the same or better qualifications and service.
In 2011, the Supreme Court rejected the class-
action lawsuit of the nearly 1.5 million women
but did not deny that sex discrimination oc-
curred (Liptak, 2011).
A recent law was passed that closed a cor-
porate loophole in treatment discrimination
