April 12 is Equal Pay Day. Chicago women will gather at noon at Daley Plaza!

Pay equity is the thorn in corporate America’s side.  Every company claims it pays equitably.  No employer thinks that it contributes to the 19.8-cents-on-the-dollar pay gap.

Yet the evidence keeps piling up. A long-simmering pay discrimination suit at Virginia Tech is finally going to trial.

Advertising giant Publicis Group SA is hit with a $100 million gender and pay discrimination lawsuit.

And of course, pay discrimination is at the heart of the Wal-Mart class action suit that has so many employers petrified. Kudos to the New York Times for adopting my point of view on how to parcel this huge class into segments that can translate to meaningful legal action.

The pay gap is equal-opportunity: women make less at each end of the educations spectrum, from physicians (a 29% gap) to food prep workers, a 5.9% gap. (Thanks to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research for its ongoing analysis of the pay gap and related topics.)

Is all this enough to get you out of your chair and ranting?   Lucky for you, Equal Pay day is tomorrow, April 12. If you’re in Chicago, you can gather at Daley Plaza at noon to celebrate the 2011 date that men have to show up at work to make as much for the year as women who started working on January 1.