As Lydia Weiss folded T-shirts to be worn during Bring Your Child to Work Day, she couldn't help but get a little angry.
The MSU Women's Resource Center employee thought of the moms who would be taking their children to work today. According to the Michigan Pay Equity Network, there's a good chance those moms do not earn the same paycheck as the men they work with.
A woman employed full-time and year-round in Michigan earns about 67 cents for every $1 a man makes, the group determined.
Weiss, co-chairwoman of MSU's Women's Council, said the wage discrimination needs to stop.
"It's a huge problem, and it stems from undervaluing work that women do and overvaluing what men do," Weiss said. "That's based on the idea of men being the bread-winners in the family."
Although wage discrimination was criminalized by the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the law hasn't been adequately enforced, said Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing.
Some state legislators are working to decrease the gap.
Bauer and Reps. Pam Byrnes, D-Lyndon Township, Kathleen Law, D-Gibralter, and Fred Miller, D-Mount Clemens, each are sponsoring a bill they say will close the pay equity gap.
They introduced the legislation at a House Labor Committee meeting Tuesday, Bauer said.
The bills propose to add wage discrimination to the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, make gender-based pay discrimination a misdemeanor, create a Commission on Pay Equity and create penalties up to $50,000 for repeat offenders.
The objective of the legislative package isn't necessarily to change the laws, but rather to strengthen them, Bauer said.
"This puts more teeth in giving people ways to redress their grievances," Bauer said. "They can file a complaint through a civil rights department, and they can continue to seek redress through the civil court system. It's a strengthening act as it relates to requiring equal pay for work of comparable value."
What the legislators are saying is misleading, said Matt Resch, spokesman for House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche, R-Novi.
"The fact of the matter is, paying two people a different wage for the same job is illegal in Michigan and in the country," Resch said. "Once something is illegal, it can't be any more illegal."
The legislators' main goal is to modify the entire marketplace, not cease wage discrimination, said Rich Studley, executive vice president of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber is a statewide business organization that represents about 7,000 employers across Michigan, and its members testified in the Labor Committee meeting against the legislation.
"At the Michigan chamber, we support equal pay for equal work," Studley said. "The challenge here is that what these bills call for is equal pay for different jobs — jobs that a government agency might decide are different but of comparable value. We're concerned about the paperwork, the bureaucracy and the litigation that would result from this legislation."
Compensation to workers should be determined by the marketplace — not the legislature, Studley said.
"We think that the compensation that is paid to individuals should be established by the marketplace or by collective bargaining, not by some bureaucratic process that involves social engineering and value judgment that will inevitably end up in court," he said.
Gail Sutton, a corporate representative for Gumby's Pizza, 311 W. Grand River Ave., said men and women who have the same job duties at Gumby's receive the same compensation.
That's the way it should be, Sutton added.
"Pay should be based on capability, not gender," Sutton said. "It should be based on qualifications — not gender, or race or whatever else."
Audrey Smith, office manager for the Women's Resource Center, echoed Sutton's statements.
"If we're doing the same job, we should be getting the same pay," she said. "We all have bills to pay."
Alex Altman can be reached at altmanal@msu.edu.
