DeLauro Denounces Trump Administration’s Anti-Equal Pay Initiative

WASHINGTON, DC (August 29, 2017) — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) today released the following statement denouncing the Trump Administration's changes to the EEO-1 Form, which is used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to collect equal pay data.

"The Trump Administration's immediate stay on collecting wage data from large companies via the EEO-1 form is a shameless attempt to dismantle a critical equal pay initiative. This is an attack on equal pay, plain and simple.

"For over 50 years, companies have used the EEO-1 form to provide the EEOC with important employee demographic information, like sex, race, and ethnicity, by job category. The EEO-1 form was recently updated to ask large companies to start reporting information on what they pay their employees by sex, race, and ethnicity. This Equal Pay Data Collection is a critical tool that allows the EEOC to identify pay discrimination and encourage companies to correct pay disparities.

"The biggest problem facing our country today is that families are not making enough to live on—and closing the wage gap would help address that problem. Pay discrimination in the workplace is real—and it is happening everywhere. Pay inequity does not just affect women – it affects children, families, and our economy as a whole, because women in this country are the sole or co-breadwinner in half of families with children.

"Men and women in the same job should have the same pay. Period. Through this latest action, President Trump has once again pushed our nation backwards rather than forward."

Earlier this year, Congresswoman DeLauro and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would strengthen and close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by holding employers accountable for discriminatory practices, ending the practice of pay secrecy, easing workers' ability to individually or jointly challenge pay discrimination, and strengthening the available remedies for wronged employees. The House legislation has 198 cosponsors (every Democratic Member of the House and one Republican Member) and the Senate legislation has 43 cosponsors.