US to collect equal pay data from all big employers

Obama will also announce that the White House will host a “United State of Women” Summit May 23.

Ledbetter, after formally endorsing, was at the White House that same day to introduce Obama at the commemoration.

President Obama proposed on Friday that the government collect summary pay data each year from private companies with more than 100 employees.

The Obama Administration issued an executive order this morning that aims to close the gender wage gap. He made good on that promise the following month by unveiling his National Equal Pay Task Force.

Despite those efforts, across all professions, women earn about 79 cents for every dollar earned by men-only 2 cents greater than when Mr. Obama took office.

Obama said women from ethnic minorities fair even worse.

Ms Ledbetter – a former Alabama tyre plant supervisor who lost a landmark 2007 equal pay case in the US Supreme Court – joined Mr Obama for Friday’s announcement.

The actions include a proposal to annually collect summary pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity from businesses with 100 or more employees. To protect worker privacy, employers will not be required to submit individual-level pay data; employers would report the number of employees within set pay bands. They say that gender discrimination is already illegal and that women can sue their employers if they believe they are being discriminated against. “Collecting this pay data would help fill a critical void we need to ensure American workers receive fair pay for their work”.

“We can’t know what we don’t know”, said Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez.

For Americans who’ve ever wondered whether the person in the next cubicle doing the same job is being paid more, or those who’d like their companies to take a hard look at inequality on the payroll-there’s good news from the government.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it will push large employers to disclose employee pay data, an effort to reduce wage discrimination in the workplace. But, if they don’t, the data would give his department a “more powerful tool…to root out discrimination where it does exist”.

That wage gap narrowed in the 1990s and grew again after 2000. “They’re not just “social issues” – they’re fundamental to our country’s economic future, and they are at the heart of everything she’s fighting for on this campaign”, Ledbetter wrote. “With pay data due in September, 2017, under the to-be-revised EEO-1 form, there is limited time for companies to analyze current pay systems, identify and address actual or perceived inequities, and implement a pay transparency plan that both establishes the needed line of communication with employees and minimizes operational interruption”.

“It hurts us, it hurts our families and it hurts our economy”, Ledbetter said.

David Cohen, president of DCI Consulting Group, a consulting firm that leads business’ pay-equity studies, said the proposal is undermined because it will compare pay of workers with vastly different jobs, markets and abilities.

“Clearly the administration has embarked on one more fishing expedition to support a political agenda divorced from the facts”, Johnson said.