Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers voted against fair pay for women

Former Michigan Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running for the Senate seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, presents himself as an ally to workers and women. During his 14 years in the House of Representatives, however, he repeatedly voted against legislation aimed at ensuring that women and men are paid equally for the same work.

Polls show Rogers leading in the Aug. 6 Republican Senate primary. U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

Women who work full time in the United States are on average paid 17% less than their male counterparts for the same work, according to 2021 data from the U.S. Department of Labor, despite a 1963 law that prohibits sex-based wage discrimination. 

According to the nonprofit advocacy organization National Partnership for Women & Families, in Michigan the annual wage gap between men and women with jobs is more than $15,000 — enough to pay for 10 months of health insurance, 15 months of rent, or 1.2 years of child care.

Women are more likely to be the primary breadwinners and caregivers in their homes, so when they’re paid less, the effects are also felt by those around them, said Danielle Atkinson, the founding director of Mothering Justice, a Detroit-based organization that advocates for mothers and women’s rights, including issues around financial stability. 

“The ramifications for that are not only getting paid less, having less to provide for a community,” Atkinson told the Michigan Independent.

Rogers represented a central Michigan congressional district from 2001 to 2015. During his tenure, the House considered two major bills aimed at closing the pay gap.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed by President Barack Obama in January 2009, changed federal law to make it easier for victims of workplace discrimination to receive back pay. Prior to the law, workers had to take legal action within 180 days of when they initially experienced wage discrimination; the new legislation allowed that clock to reset with each new unfair paycheck. 

In 2007 and 2009, Rogers voted against the bill.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, which has repeatedly passed in the House but stalled in the Senate, would make it easier to hold employers accountable for pay discrimination by increasing legal remedies for victims, protecting the right of workers to discuss their salaries with each other, and establishing a federal task force to help enforce the law. 

Rogers voted against that legislation in 2008 and 2009.

The Rogers campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Slotkin is a co-sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act and voted for it in 2019 and 2021.

“I cosponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act because, quite simply, it’s 2024 and there are women in the workforce who don’t receive equal pay for the same exact work men are doing,” she wrote in an email to the Michigan Independent. “Women still make around 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, so I cosponsored this bill to ensure Michigan women are compensated fairly and equally.” 

Democratic Senate candidate Hill Harper told the Michigan Independent in an email that he found Rogers’ votes unsurprising: “It’s par for the course for many career politicians in general and Republicans in particular. This isn’t 1924, it’s 2024 and we are way past the time of making sure women have equal pay for equal work. Anything else is nonsense. I will always work to ensure there is pay equity for women and all marginalized communities.”

Wages are often treated as a taboo topic of discussion in the workplace, Atkinson said, but codifying equal pay protections, as the Paycheck Fairness Act would, would empower people to discuss the subject and ensure women are paid equally to men.

“The goal is an even, fair playing field, where everyone is able to make the same wages, same compensation, regardless of their gender or their race,” Atkinson said. “And so we need to have the mechanisms that really address the systemic inequalities that have led to inequality in people’s paychecks.”

Atkinson added that it’s important for voters to understand the gender pay gap and what it means for the world around them because they have the ability to send a message to lawmakers that the issue should be a priority.

“Vote on the issues that are affecting you,” she said. “Be strong in your convictions and hold elected officials and candidates accountable for the things that will make you and your family more stable.”

This is not the only time Rogers voted against workers’ and women’s rights. 

In 2007, he voted against a bill that would have raised the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. (Four months later, he voted for a defense appropriations bill that included the minimum wage increase provisions).

Rogers has repeatedly backed an array of national abortion bans, co-sponsoring bills that would have declared that life begins at the moment of conception. He also twice co-sponsored bills that would have suspended FDA approval of the medication abortion drug mifepristone.