On Equal Pay Day 2009 — the day on which the average woman’s pay will catch up to a man’s total earnings from the previous year — Change.Org’s Jen Nedeau points us to this stat:

[I]n the United States, women are paid only 78¢ on average for every dollar paid to men. The National Women’s Law Center reports how when President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, it made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform equal work….At the time of the Equal Pay Act’s passage in 1963, women were paid merely 59 cents to every dollar earned by men. Hmm – so in 45 years, women’s wages compared to men’s have only increased by 19 cents?

Plus, “over the last six years, the wage gap has closed only 2 cents.” That’s slow progress, to be sure.

The Wonk Room has noted before that the difference between the median wages of all full-time working men and women over a 40 year period amounts to about $434,000, on average. Women’s pay is actually less than men’s in every one of the 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the US Census Bureau in 2007.

And as Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) pointed out, “the impact of the wage gap is particularly painful in our current economic downturn as families struggle to make ends meet in the face of stagnant wages and job losses”:

Women make up more than 46 percent of the workforce and, as the number of working women continues to grow, so does the number of families reliant solely on the salaries of women. Since the recession began in December 2007, 3.7 million men have lost their jobs; creating even more families dependant on the smaller pay checks women earn.

The Congress has passed — and President Obama has signed into law — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is a good step toward full pay equality. But as CAP’s Jessica Arrons, Heather Boushey and Lauren Smith wrote, more can be done, including passing the Paycheck Fairness Act. The act prohibits retaliation against employees who actively seek knowledge regarding the pay rates of their coworkers, closes “loopholes that employers have exploited to avoid paying fines and provides funding for programs that will train women to negotiate their wages.”

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza is reporting that Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties and plans to run in 2010 as a Democrat:

“I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary,” said Specter in a statement…”Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.“

Specter’s departure is further evidence that Republicans in Congress have collectively lurched to the right, embracing radicalization and a preoccupation with non-issues like global currency. However, in a statement, Specter emphasized that “my change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans”:

Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Still, Specter’s switch may be a good sign for labor law reform. While Specter’s March announcement that he would oppose cloture for the Employee Free Choice Act dealt a significant blow to the bill’s chances of passing, going forward, his votes in this area are still going to be very important.

It’s worth remembering that Specter was the lone Republican senator to support EFCA in 2007. He has also been a vocal proponent of labor law reform. In a 2008 article for the Harvard Journal on Legislation, he argued that “union representation elections today are often conducted in an environment of intimidation and coercion, and federal labor law provides toothless remedies that fail to deter further abuses by union organizers and employers alike”:

We embrace the conclusion of scholars who contend that “what we need is major surgery on the legal procedure through which employees make their choice about union representation.” The most critical focus of this reform should be protecting the right of employees to freely choose whether they wish to be represented.

So even if Specter is still opposed cloture for EFCA in its current form (and who knows what political constraints he may find himself free of now), he has admitted that the system for forming a union is broken. Furthermore, he may find it very difficult to run in union-heavy Pennsylvania as a Democrat without supporting some sort of labor reform. Does this mean that there is an EFCA compromise in the works?