Stand Up For Us, Senator Robach!

The Rochester Chapter of NOW staged a protest in front of State Senator Joe Robach's office in Greece on Tuesday, April 22.  At issue is the New York State Fair Pay Act (S.2936), which Robach (R,Greece) and his fellow Republicans are  trying to scuttle. 

As the  new head of the Senate Labor Committee, Robach can keep the bill bottled up in committee so it can't be voted upon.  And, that's just what he's doing.

The bill, which was introduced by Senator Craig Johnson (D, Port Washington), is designed to help rectify the problem of pay inequities suffered by women and people of color.  Specifically, the bill would force employers in NY State to pay employees  comparable pay for comparable work. 

Often, when women or minorities  predominate in a particular job, those jobs are undervalued in the marketplace and therefore paid less than comparable jobs with the same level of skills and responsibilities.

This bill has passed the Assembly every year since 2002, but each time the Senate has blocked it.  With an election looming this November and Republicans fearful of losing control of the Senate, there is added pressure for legislators to act.

Unfortunately, Senator Robach has chosen to take the low road on this issue. The day before Senator Johnson was to force a vote to take the Fair Pay Act out of committee and put it to a full vote of the Senate, Robach and the other GOP senators whizzed through a watered-down version of a pay equity bill with no teeth so they could pretend they had done something about pay equity when, in reality, they had not. (The bill which Robach introduced calls for the issue to be studied when as he well knows, it has already been studied to death.)

Naturally, the next day when Johnson's bill came to the floor, it went nowhere.  Senator Robach didn't even bother to show up for the vote.  Here's  Craig Johnson arguing in favor of his  bill on the floor of the senate: