Equal Pay Act of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. In passing the bill, Congress stated that sex discrimination:The law provides (in part) that:
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was passed to amend the FLSA and make it illegal to pay some workers lower wages than others strictly on the basis on their sex. It is often summed up with the phrase "equal pay for equal work." The Equal Pay Act allows unequal pay for equal work only when the employer sets wages pursuant to a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production or other factors outside of sex. For the first nine years of the EPA, the requirement of equal pay for equal work did not extend to persons employed in an executive, administrative or professional capacity, or as an outside salesperson. Therefore, the EPA exempted white-collar women from the protection of equal pay for equal work. In 1972, Congress enacted the Education Amendments of 1972, which amended the FLSA to expand the coverage of the EPA to these employees, by excluding the EPA from the professional workers exemption of the FLSA.