By David Cruz
Correspondent
On a Monday full of committee meetings and with a quorum call awaiting, Sen. Loretta Weinberg — the lawmaker with the most feminist street cred in the statehouse — tried to rally her colleagues and supporters to attempt an override of the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 992, a bill that would force companies to show that they pay women on par with men and allowed women to seek back pay if they proved pay discrimination.
“If we take no action, we will not reach pay equity in New Jersey until the year 2055. Our residents deserve better, so we’re announcing today that we’re going to put this bill up for an override vote and on Dec. 19, one week from today, we will ask our colleagues to stand with us and to stand up for women in New Jersey,” Weinberg said.
The bill passed both houses with veto-proof majorities, with several Republican lawmakers joining the Democrats. But the governor vetoed the bill, calling it “nonsensical,” saying the state and federal government had already enacted sufficient protections and that unlimited back pay was too generous.
“There is no reason for our law to go beyond the Lilly Ledbetter Act;” he wrote in his veto message. “The sponsors certainly should not object to matching the federal law they so often cite as a model.”
But supporters of the New Jersey bill say the Ledbetter Law falls short.
“Lilly Ledbetter will never receive compensation from Goodyear for two decades of wage discrimination, but we don’t have to allow the same thing happen in New Jersey,” said Sen. Linda Greenstein.
Although the numbers are better for women of higher education and varies by industry, by and large, Census Bureau statistics show that women working full-time in New Jersey earn 80 cents to every man’s dollar. But if you factor in part-time workers, that shrinks to about 69 cents.
For some, that disparity is even greater. Black women in New Jersey working full time earn 58 cents for every dollar a white man makes. Over a 40-year career, that adds up to an income gap of $1.2 million, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
For Latinas in New Jersey it’s 43 cents on the dollar. That’s the largest wage gap in the country for Latinas.
“It’s so sad that it’s 2016 and I have to stand over here to advocate for equal pay,” Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez said.
“Let’s set the example. Every year a new generation of women enter the working world and they should enter a world knowing that society acknowledges them as equals. They should enter a world knowing that they’re just as good as anyone else and they should enter a world knowing that they’re going to be treated because of who they are and what they do, not because they’re women, not because of their race and not because of their religion,” said Sen. Sandra Cunningham.
But as steadfast as these Democrats were, they were standing alone today. In seven years, they have never been able to successfully override a Christie veto and, when it’s comes right down to it, their Republican colleagues — six in the Senate and five in the Assembly on this bill — have never come through for them.
“We have a group of people from the other side of the aisle who seemed to think this bill made sense, so given all of that, why would I not think that they will help vote to override the conditional veto,” Weinberg said. Just because it’s never happened before, “Doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen next Monday.”
Or, like a lot of Democratic priorities in Trenton nowadays, they could just wait and hope that the next governor will be on their side, or at least a little easier to override.