Grace and Grit Read online

  This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as the author has remembered them, to the best of her ability. All of the names are also true, with the exception of the Goodyear employees whose names have been changed in order to protect their privacy and/or the anonymity of the various individuals involved.

  Copyright © 2012 by Lilly Ledbetter

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover and in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ledbetter, Lilly M.

  Grace and grit: my fight for equal pay and fairness at Goodyear and beyond / Lilly Ledbetter with Lanier Isom.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Sex discrimination against women—United States—History—21st century. 2. Ledbetter, Lilly M. 3. Women—United States—Biography. 4. Sex discrimination against women—Law and legislation—United States. 5. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. I. Isom, Lanier Scott. II. Title.

  HQ1237.5.U6L43 2012

  331.4′2153092—dc23

  [B] 2011034579

  eISBN: 978-0-307-88793-1

  PHOTOGRAPH ON THIS PAGE: AP PHOTO/RON EDMONDS

  COVER DESIGN BY NUPOOR GORDON

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON WALLIS

  v3.1_r1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1 Possum Trot

  2 Marrying Charles

  3 Going to Work

  4 Becoming a Rubber Worker

  5 Lighthearted, Light-Footed Lilly

  6 Up to My Knees in Alligators

  7 Holding the Tiger by the Tail

  8 Protecting My Good Name

  9 Ms. Ledbetter Goes to Washington

  10 Becoming the Grandmother of Equal Pay

  My Speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention

  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Bench Announcement, May 29, 2007

  President Obama’s Speech upon the Signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, January 29, 2009

  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

  The Paycheck Fairness Act

  RESOURCES

  FURTHER READING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  If I can stop one heart from breaking,

  I shall not live in vain:

  If I can ease one life the aching,

  Or cool one pain,

  Or help one fainting robin

  Unto his nest again,

  I shall not live in vain.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  DURING MY time at Goodyear, I’d discovered many an anonymous note at work, some serious, some not. Once, a guy left a note on my car windshield asking me out. The next thing I knew, as I waited for my bacon-and-cheese biscuit in the drive-through at Hardee’s on my way home, that fool came knocking on my window to see if I’d gotten his message. Another time, someone wrote, “My brother’s married to a white woman. Would you go out with me?” At that time in Alabama—we’re home to more civil rights struggles than anywhere in the country—you didn’t see blacks and whites dating. I was slightly amused by that one. Other times, I found notes like the one warning me about another crew trying to take credit for my crew’s production numbers by changing information in the computer, and the one telling me that excess scrap rubber on the floor was going to be blamed on my shift rather than the shift that actually caused the problem.

  Over the span of twenty years at Goodyear, I’d probably gotten a dozen notes. Most of the time I figured they were from workers on the day shift, but I never knew exactly who wrote them. Whoever left the helpful notes, though, made it possible for me to survive situations that could have ended my career. No one else I knew of, neither management nor union workers, received notes like these, at least no one ever said so. I have to believe this was because I stood out in the crowd, to say the least, as one of only a handful of women managers at Goodyear.

  THE DAY I discovered the note that changed the course of my life started like any other.

  If you’ve never been to Alabama, you probably don’t know that we have the prettiest springs in the world. Late that afternoon the pear trees were in full bloom and the cherry trees were starting to unveil their pink buds. I was driving to work as usual, heading west on the two-lane highway snaking through the rolling hills, only a couple of other cars on the road, probably people like me going to work at one of the plants in Gadsden.

  All through my years at Goodyear, the highlight of my day was the ritual of going to work while most people were coming home. I loved seeing the sky’s changing colors as evening fell and the endless headlights streaming toward Jacksonville while I traveled in the opposite direction, my Buick riding quiet and smooth. I always did like to travel my own road.

  That afternoon before I left, my husband, Charles, kept following me around the house while I was getting ready, trying to convince me to stay home from work, to give my injured knee some rest—it had been about a week since my coworker had accidentally shut one of the hydraulic gates on me. I had a knot as big as a baseball on my knee, but I only had two more days until my appointment with the orthopedist and I was determined not to miss work.

  But Charles was the type of person who borrowed worry. As he stood behind me in the bathroom while I applied my mascara, he was downright mad, insisting I take his advice. He fussed about the fact I was lifting heavy Hummer tires, telling me I’d ruin my knee for good if I didn’t listen to him. Recently retired from Fort McClellan, where he’d overseen housing on the army base, he was probably hoping I’d stick around to eat dinner with him and keep him company through the evening, watching an episode of his favorite show, Law & Order.

  Even though Charles was well aware that Goodyear frowned on any absence from work, he just didn’t understand how anxious I’d become lately. Over the previous year, rumors about layoffs and the plant shutting down had been flying around. Several batches of bad tires had gotten out the door, and I’d been blamed for one batch of four hundred that had been scrapped. Everyone, both managers and the union workers, was on edge.

  Charles’s haranguing wasn’t helping my nerves, so when I about poked my eye with my mascara wand, I snapped at him to find something else to nitpick about. Then I locked him out of the bathroom to wrestle the support hose onto my good leg in peace. The next thing I knew, Charles hollered at me through the door that he was running down to McDonald’s to buy me a chocolate milk shake for supper. I smiled thinking about him throwing on his jacket and shoes to hustle out the door. Charles was always in motion; he couldn’t sit still if his life depended on it, not even to watch TV (unless Law & Order or the Atlanta Braves were on). The minute he got home from work, he’d make a pot of coffee and throw his laundry into the washing machine before he went out to rake some leaves or cut the grass. As long as he was straightening and fixing around the house, he was happy and his blue eyes sparkled.

  A little while later I finally got out the door. I kissed Charles good-bye, milk shake in hand. It was impossible to stay mad at him for long. It was then, rushing down the walkway, that I heard the whippoorwill’s call. Hurried as I was, I stopped still to listen. When I was a girl, if my grandmother Granny Mac heard a whippoorwill, she imm
ediately took to bed. She swore someone was going to die. Standing in the driveway, listening to its haunting song, I tried to shrug off a child’s sense of dread.

  By the time I got past Jacksonville onto the old highway, I began to think about the job. I looked forward to this hour when I sorted through most of my problems. Passing churches and junkyards I’d driven by a thousand times, I couldn’t help but think about how much I missed the tire room. Tire building was one of the toughest jobs at the plant. I’d loved the work and the old-timers, now in their fifties and sixties, who’d been building tires since they were teenagers, just like their fathers. I’d recently been transferred to quality control, where I just didn’t feel like I belonged. The fact that my coworker, used to working solo, had slammed a hydraulic gate on my leg because he forgot that I was walking behind him, certainly seemed like a sign. And everybody knew my transfer had been a demotion, retaliation for speaking out about my supervisor’s unfair performance evaluations.

  As the miles melted behind me and I got closer to the plant, I remembered how I used to be able to leave behind worries about what was going on with the kids or Charles as I mused over the details that awaited me in the tire room. I’d run through the stock that needed prepping, how many men might not report to work, and the production schedule. By the time I checked in at the gates of the plant, I’d have sealed off my emotions, ready for work.

  Now I could feel myself trying to clamp down on my worries about my new department. I knew that once I walked through those steel gates, I needed to carry my shoulders high like Hector, my ballroom dancing teacher, taught me, “reaching them toward my back pocket,” as he put it. I took a deep breath and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I hummed my favorite tune, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” picturing myself on the dance floor. That helped a little.

  When I reached the plant that evening I was running late, and my knee throbbed. I stopped by my cubby in the small, empty office area upstairs across from the copying room to check my mail, as I’d done every day at Goodyear. I flipped through the company memos about the upcoming safety-training class and fliers about the next car collectors show being held in the parking lot, almost missing the torn piece of copy paper with black handwriting on it.

  I read the scribbled words, and my heart jerked as if an electric jolt had coursed through my body. Though I stood perfectly still, I was churning inside. I quickly stuck the note in my pocket and hurried to the ladies’ room, where I sat on the sofa trying to breathe. I hoped no one in the copy room had noticed me leave in such a hurry.

  I’d never in my life gotten a note like this before. Someone had listed my name and those of the three other tire-room managers, with salaries next to each name. My salary was exactly correct, down to the dollar. Over the years, I’d worried about being paid less than the men who were doing the same work I was, but I didn’t have any proof. I was like a wife nursing a nagging suspicion that her husband’s having an affair, with no hard evidence. But now there it was in plain black ink, what I’d always feared: The other managers, all men, had been making more than I was.

  A lot more.

  Still reeling, I got up and started pacing the bathroom floor, wishing I’d stayed home with Charles, like he’d suggested. Then I stopped and pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket. The paper listed three men who’d started in 1979, the same year I did. The one woman on my original squadron of five was long gone, and over the years the few women who’d been promoted to management hadn’t lasted. Now, in 1998, I was one of a few female area managers in the entire operation of about fourteen hundred people. I often wondered how the other women managers were making it, although I never got the opportunity to talk to them. The plant was so large, and I never socialized outside of work. It was always clear that I’d never be part of the boys’ club—and that was just as well. It wasn’t a club that I wanted to belong to. So I kept my boundaries clear.

  The annoying low buzzing of the fluorescent lights in the ladies’ room filled my ears as I squinted at the numbers. Maybe I was seeing things. Maybe this note was a serious mistake or a bad joke. But I knew in my gut that it wasn’t. If you’ve ever hit an animal driving down the road, you know the sickening recognition the thudding sound sends through your body. I had that feeling in spades.

  As I read those numbers again and again, I couldn’t help but think how I’d started at Goodyear. Almost forty at the time, I was far from naïve: I’d known from the get-go that I’d have to work longer and smarter than the men in order to prove myself. But how in the world could I have been paid less all these years? The difference in salaries just didn’t make sense.

  I stood frozen, finally raising my eyes to the ceiling. I stared at the spread of brown water stains on the white ceiling tiles. Layers of thick gray dust coated the steel vent, and the outline of a dead roach rested directly above me in its fluorescent grave. I had to close my eyes. That was a mistake. Suddenly, a feeling of dread overwhelmed me, the same feeling I had when I went to sleep these days and dreamed about not being able to find my way out of the plant or about crazy gigantic tires chasing me. This was far worse.

  After a few minutes, I knew I had to get it together or I’d really be late. That’s when I felt the shame, the haunting humiliation deep in my bones. As the numbers kept looping through my mind, I couldn’t shake the realization of how stupid I’d been to try so hard and think that it would pay off. I’d wanted so badly to win approval, and I had done so in the eyes of most of my coworkers, who valued my hard work and loyalty—and who gave it back to me.

  But how dumb I’d been to think that this would counter the hostility surrounding me. How arrogant to think that I was the woman who had the strength to win at Goodyear. Those numbers said loud and clear that it didn’t matter how hard I’d worked, how much I’d wanted to succeed and do the right thing: I’d been born the wrong sex, and that was that.

  Unable to budge, I glanced at my watch and then stuffed the note into my pocket. I rubbed my face, trying to bury what was now nothing short of a sense of desperation. After I washed my hands, I stared at myself in the large mirror. On the outside, nothing about me had changed. But as surely as if I’d looked out a window and seen the sky turn an uncanny grayish pink and felt that strange stillness right before a funnel cloud forms, my horizon had transformed, my life had shifted, and a storm was headed my way.

  CHAPTER 1

  Possum Trot

  Have you heard of the

  Nothing impossible possum

  Whose faith and belief made

  His dream to blossom?

  —MARJORIE AINSBOROUGH DECKER,

  The Christian Mother Goose Book of Nursery Rhymes

  IF YOU grow up in Possum Trot, Alabama, you run across some rough characters from time to time. You might even be related to a few. In truth, the tough guys at Goodyear weren’t a far cry from what I’d seen and heard in the fields picking cotton or in the barn helping milk the cows at Aunt Lucille’s dairy farm.

  I’ll never forget the afternoon when my grandfather, Papa, decided he wanted to kill my dog, Buzz. Papa, who claimed to be part Irish, was so pale that he looked part ghost. I’m honestly not sure there was any good in him, but I can also say that he wasn’t all that different from most of the other men around me.

  I was only five the day Papa came after Buzz, but my memory of that afternoon is clear as day. I was playing tea party in the front yard, scooping up dirt with a broken teacup Granny Mac had given me, and Buzz was my honored guest. As I set down a cup in front of Buzz, I heard Papa hollering down the road. I looked back at the house, hoping to see that Mama was still right inside the screen door cooking supper, and that she’d hear the racket in time to come out and protect me and Buzz. She wasn’t. As Papa’s large figure approached us, my stomach clenched. He was carrying something; it looked like a hoe.

  I’d never had a pet before, unless you count the rooster who used to follow me around. But one day Buzz had appeared out of nowhere. We immedi
ately took to each other. He was a funny little dog, brown and white and black with one dark spot shaped like a pumpkin seed on the top of his forehead. I used to rub that spot like it was a good-luck penny. I figured his breed was part everything, with his big hound-dog eyes, those large feet he slapped in front of him like clown shoes, and that mismatched coloring pieced together like a crazy quilt.

  By the time Papa was close enough for me to make out what he was saying, Buzz had scooted under the house. “Where’s that goddam worthless mutt?” he yelled. “He ain’t worth killing.”

  I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even move. My mouth was as dry as if I’d swallowed the cup of dirt. All I could think about was how Papa would slaughter the pigs in the smokehouse. I always got attached to one of them, so I made a point of being as far away from the smokehouse as possible when killing time came. I wanted no part of wash pots filled with boiling-hot water and the hanging, splitting, and dressing of the meat. But I did show up about the time sausage was frying in the deep black skillet.

  “Goddammit, Lilly. You better mind me and get that dog.” Papa’s eyes were moist and almost closed, like they had Vaseline smeared on them. He turned around and around in a circle trying to find Buzz, almost falling. He was drunk, really drunk. He lurched toward me, and I jumped up. Buzz must have thought Papa was going to hurt me because he shot out from under the porch, growling and circling us. Papa lunged at him, slicing the hoe through the air. I tried to stay between Papa and Buzz, never even thinking that I might get hit.

  As we continued to dance around each other, the screen door slapped shut at last, and Mama came out screaming at Papa. His face and large nose flushed red above his white collared shirt buttoned to the top under his overalls. But other than that he didn’t pay Mama a bit of attention as he, Buzz, and I continued to waltz around each other, the hoe thudding hard whenever it hit the ground.

  “I mean it, Tot,” she said, using the name everyone (but me) called him. “Don’t make no sense to be scaring Lilly like that. Put it down.”