Finally! Alabama is Top in the Nation in something other than football.

The only problem is, that – true to form – it’s in something bad.

The reader will recall that Alabama is the state where Lilly Ledbetter was screwed over by a bunch of men where she worked for Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Gadsden, by not being paid the same amount of money for doing the same amount of work, and then was denied her day before the United States Supreme Court, which then gave rise to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

Of her case, United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote:

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.

Face it: Alabama has a poor track record when it comes to equality.

Voted NO on Civil Rights.

The infamous Alabama HB-56, aka the “Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act,” which virtually makes being an Hispanic illegal.

Voted NO on Equal Pay for Equal Work.

What is Alabama’s major malfunction?

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Alabama‘s pay gap between men and women among largest in nation, study says

Published: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 2:09 PM Updated: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 2:11 PM

By Alex Walsh | awalsh@al.com

National Women’s Law Center

Alabama is home to the eighth-largest gap between what men and women earn, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).To compile its rankings, the NWLC looked at two figures for each state: the median annual wage for all male workers in a state, and the same figure for females. In Alabama, the median salary is $42,951 for male workers, and $31,862 for female workers, a difference of 25.8 percent.

Across the U.S., the median annual wage is $48,202 for men, and $37,118 for women, a 23 percent difference.

This research suggests that, across the state and nation, women have less economic opportunity overall, says Kate Gallagher Robbins, a senior policy analyst for the NWLC. The data is less about compensation for one specific occupation, although Gallagher Robbins says research shows those gaps exist, too.

Several factors might explain why the median annual wage for men is higher. For example, more women are at the bottom of the pay scale relative to men; of the population of U.S. workers earning the minimum wage, two thirds are women, Gallagher Robbins says.

Gallagher Robbins also speculates that men with a high school diploma or less education might have an easier time finding a high paying job as compared with their female counterparts. To that end, several of the states with the largest gender-based wage gaps — Wyoming, Louisiana, West Virginia, North Dakota — have vibrant natural resource extraction industries, which might favor men.

In Alabama, the average weekly wage for workers in goods-producing industries — construction, manufacturing, and mining — was $965 in the fourth quarter, compared to the statewide weekly average of $832. Roughly 19 percent of Alabama’s laborers work in those industries.

How might the pay gap be reduced? Gallagher Robbins says increased investments in training programs might help diversify the workforce at entry-level, expanding opportunities for all workers. And to the extent that employers discriminate against women when determining compensation — which is a difficult concept to quantify, Gallagher Robbins says — expanding state laws to encourage equal pay could help reduce those effects.

The full state-by-state rankings are available online.

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http://blog.al.com/businessnews/2012/10/women_pay_gap.html