It turns out that big brother is watching in more ways than one. What many would have assumed to be the government eye solely looking out for criminal activity is now the eye of incorporating ways into the prevention of unfair practices. One of these unfair practices is wage discrimination. The federal government is seeking additional information from employers to report gender, race, and ethnicity.
President Obama has recently announced a plan that mandates companies and other federal contractors with more than 100 employees to report gender and race beyond the scope of 12 various salaries to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The information would consist of almost 63 million employees –comprised of those who make less than $19,239 to those who make more than $208,000.
Not everyone is on board supporting this plan, however. Blair Robinson, partner at Morgan Lewis, a law firm representing businesses in employment discrimination cases, said this plan which would make companies turn over data regarding earnings with the government could cause “misleading” translations of how a business compensates its workers because that business would need to appropriate specific job titles like “marketing manager” or “finance manager” into very wide range job classifications like “first/mid-level officials and managers.” Each of those job titles may have very different earnings that have nothing to do with race or gender, Robinson said.
According to Robinson, employees with the same job title may be compensated in another way because they have skills that vary along with performance reviews. “There are all sorts of factors that are not discriminatory that might explain pay, but that’s not getting picked up in this reporting,” he said.
The decision to pay an employee should be on the basis of “merit, qualifications, and contributions to his or her employer,” and not on the basis of an employee’s ethnicity, race or gender, said Randy Johnson, senior vice president of Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Johnson made it clear that both he and his company support nondiscrimination in employee pay but he says that the kind of information gathered by the administration would pose useless and cumbersome burdens on businesses while supplying very little insight as to whether the channels of how businesses pay are discriminatory.
The Labor Department disagrees, however, saying that the information will be a more useful apparatus for fighting pay discrimination. According to Thomas E. Perez, Secretary of Labor “We can’t deliver on the promise of equal pay unless we have the best, most comprehensive information about what people earn.
September 2017 is the expected date the cumulative data is supposed to be delivered.
As reported by the Census Bureau data, for every dollar a male earns, the average female who works full time earns 79 cents. And it’s even worse for Blacks and Hispanics who get paid 55-60 cents for every dollar earned by a man.
Do you feel you may be the victim of wage discrimination?
If so, it’s essential for you to take a stand and do something about it. Call today for a FREE Consultation in NY, NJ & PA. Schedule a free consultation with a wage discrimination attorney at the Derek Smith Law Group, PLLC in NY, NJ, PA, and D.C. You can reach us online or by calling 877-469-5297 or click here to contact us online. Our NYC employment law attorneys handle cases involving wage discrimination, sexual harassment, and other employment-related lawsuits. We serve clients throughout New York, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. We also have offices in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Miami to serve you.
