Obama to announce rule aimed to advance equal pay

The President marked the day by announcing a proposal aimed at closing the gender wage gap by requiring companies with 100 or more employees to report their staff’s pay broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The median wage of full-time working women is $39,600 compared to $50,400 collected by men.

The EEOC proposal is in response to a task force set up by President Obama, which recommended new data-collection requirements to combat pay discrimination in the workplace. Requires contractors to provide information on gender, race, job title, occupational category and compensation, and to report certain changes during the course of the contract; information must be filed with Labor Commissioner and Division of Civil Rights.

“We can’t know what we don’t know”.

This new pay data will allow the EEOC to compile and publish aggregated figures that will help employers in conducting their own analysis of their pay practices to assist in their compliance efforts.

And that has some Pennsylvania lawmakers shining a spotlight on Pennsylvania’s Equal Pay Act, which is ineffectual in comparison.

Today, he extended the powers of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which he signed into law exactly seven years ago today.

In Iowa now women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Further, Obama’s work to improve wages in low wage jobs where women are more likely to work included not only pushing for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage-two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, disproportionately African American women and Latina-but also taking action himself. Obama proposed a new rule Friday that would require large companies to report employees’ pay based on race and gender.

And some have even enacted comparable worth laws that prohibit pay discrimination between jobs that, while different, are of similar value to the employer. And the pay gap is significantly greater for women of color: the typical black non-Hispanic woman made only 60 percent of a typical white non-Hispanic man’s earnings, while the typical Hispanic woman earned only 55 percent.

President Barack Obama stands with Lilly Ledbetter at the seventh anniversary of the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act at the White House Friday in Washington, D.C. In 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, named after a woman who discovered her employer was paying her less than men doing the same job.

“We run the risk of falling behind other states as we compete for a highly skilled workforce”, Senn said.

Women were apparently being paid so unfairly at Salesforce.com, Benioff needed to spend $3 million to make sure they were equally compensated.

But a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, also released Friday, argues that’s no longer the case as women have earned the majority of college degrees.