In an unprecedented gesture, President Joe Biden recently joined the picket lines alongside the United Auto Workers (UAW), marking a first for a sitting president. This act, set against the backdrop of burgeoning labor activism this year and the persistent labor crisis in the U.S., sends a strong message. It’s a clarion call for labor equity and a hopeful harbinger of a new era in which the dignity of workers is upheld and economic opportunity is democratized. It beckons the next logical agenda on the Biden-Harris administration's list: addressing true equal pay.
What we have now in the U.S. can be described as “false” equal pay–in that it requires people who are experiencing pay inequity to speak up. By definition, if you are experiencing pay, it’s not your decision to be unpaid. True equal pay shifts the responsibility to companies to prove that they are paying their workers equitably.
