Paycheck Fairness Act would allow employees to openly discuss salaries
South of the border, United States senators are attempting to combat gender wage discrimination by implementing the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Introduced in January, the bill aims to amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and reinforce protections granted in the Fair Pay Act, which overturned the 180-day statute of limitations for women to contest pay discrimination. The Fair Pay Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in January 2009, arose out of a lawsuit by Lilly Ledbetter, who lost her legal battle for pay discrimination because she didn’t file her complaint until nearly 20 years had passed.
Ledbetter took so long to file her claims because for years she wasn’t aware for years that she was getting paid less than her male counterparts for similar work.
The Paycheck Fairness Act will strengthen remedies for pay discrimination by increasing the compensation women can seek by allowing them to not only seek back pay, but also punitive damages for pay discrimination, according to bill sponsors.
The act would also require employers to prove any pay disparity is truly related to job performanceand allow co-workers to openly discuss personal salary information regardless of company policy.
There is often a misconception that U.S. law prohibits the discussion of salary within the workplace. The U.S. National Labor Relations Act states employers can’t ban the discussion of salary among employees, but it also doesn’t guarantee access to salary information.
Only a co-worker can tell you his salary — the human resources department has the right to withhold this information.
Proponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act say, once passed, it will make easier to review the salaries within a company to determine whether there is disparity between genders.
Women are paid 77 per cent of what men earn for completing the same work under similar conditions and the gap in pay costs women approximately US$434,000 over their careers, according to Paycheck Fairness Act sponsors.
“Four years after the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law to keep the courthouse doors open, it’s time to finish the job and stop wage discrimination from happening in the first place,” Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski said in a statement announcing the legislation’s introduction. “Equal pay is not just for our pocketbooks. It’s about family checkbooks and getting it right in the law books. The Paycheck Fairness Act ensures that women will no longer be fighting on their own for equal pay for equal work.”
Canadian perspective
A gender income gap continues to exist in Canada, according to the Conference Board of Canada.On average, Canadian women make 19 per cent less than Canadian men, according to 2010 data.
“There are a lot of different explanations and one would be that, particularly in history, women were paid less than men,” says Conference Board of Canada director Brenda Lafleur. “Now, if you look in the older age groups, more men than women were graduating, had higher skill level, and had higher education levels.”
Where men and women are employed within the structure of an organization also contributes to the gap, Lafleur says.
“At the upper echelon where large wages are paid or large salaries are paid, women are not getting as much in that area,” she says. “They’re not in those top management jobs.”
But one of the biggest barriers to women achieving equal pay to men is women’s role in the upbringing of children, Lafleur says.
“Because many women take off time and, in particular in the past, have taken off more than a maternity leave or a parental leave, they have less experience, especially, again, in older age groups,” she says.
Lafleur’s sentiments are echoed by Toronto-based lawyer Mary Cornish at firm Cavalluzzo, Hayes, Shilton, Mcintyre and Cornish.
“Part of the gap is also there because of barriers women face in getting more higher paying more male-dominated work,” Cornish says. “(Equality) will come from whether or not you have more affordable childcare, getting employers to stop having vulnerable, impermanent workplaces where they have a strategy of not having full time workers.”
Canadian paycheque fairness act?
Implementing similar legislation to the Paycheck Fairness Act in Canada could improve Canada’s gender income gap, but the legislation would need some improvements, Cornish says.
“The Americans have always had quite weak pay laws, so the Paycheck Fairness Act, it is not as strong as the Ontario Pay Equity Act or the Quebec Pay Equity Act,” she says.
Implemented in 1987, the Ontario Pay Equity Act “describes the minimum requirements for ensuring that an employer’s compensation practices provide pay equity for all employees in female job classes.” Quebec’s Pay Equity Act was passed in 1996 and is intended to correct wage discrepancies as a result of systemic gender-based discrimination in predominantly female job categories. Cornish agree publicly disclosing salaries could improve Canada’s situation. “I think it would be helpful to have a transparency in pay law that required employers to do that,” she says.
Increasing salary transparency may help improve the gender income gap Canada, but it doesn’t look at the problem from the right end of the spectrum, according to Lafleur. “That type of legislation is kind of like a shame and blame kind of thing,” she says. “That would be if you thought the whole gap was due to some kind of underhanded injustice like that.”
Focusing on the factors that continue to contribute to the gap is where time and effort should be spent, she says.
“You’re probably better looking at the real underlying reasons of why that gender gap is happening,” Lafleur says. “I’m sure part of it is because there are injustices, but I wouldn’t think that the majority of that is because of it.”
