DeLauro, Mikulski Applaud Department Of Labor Proposed Rule To Better Ensure Pay Equity For Federal Contract Workers

Wrote to President Obama requesting he sign Executive Order banning retaliation by government contractors against employees who discuss salary

WASHINGTON –Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, and Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Dean of the Senate women and a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee today applauded a proposal by the Department of Labor (DOL) to collect summary pay data from federal contractors. The proposed rule is to better help combat wage discrimination among federal contractors and follows a request from DeLauro and Mikulski to President Obama urging him to take executive action. Their letter is available here.

“A key part of ending what President Kennedy called the ‘serious and endemic’ problem of unequal wages is having the knowledge that you are being paid less in the first place,” DeLauro said. “Just ask Lilly Ledbetter, who only found out she was being paid less because of an anonymous note. In order to detect and combat pay discrimination, employees must be able to share salary information with their coworkers without fear of punishment. This is not just about women; it is about ensuring families, who are more reliant on women’s wages than ever, are not being shortchanged. Collecting data is a necessary step if we are to identify and end patterns of pay disparity. I am pleased the Labor Department is finally dealing with this scourge head-on. Now Congress needs to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.”

“Today’s action by the Department of Labor is a positive step towards ensuring those doing business with the federal government are not redlined, sidelined or pink slipped for seeking equal pay for equal work,” Mikulski said. “I urged President Obama to take this important step while we work to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act in Congress so that women fighting for equal pay will no longer be fighting on their own. More than a half a century since the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, women still make just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. I will continue to fight for equal pay for equal work so we can put change in the lawbooks and change into the checkbooks of working families across America.”

The proposed DOL rule follows President Obama’s April 8th Executive Order which, in addition to banning retaliation by federal contractors, instructed DOL to propose a rule to collect this data.

President Obama’s first bill, signed into law on January 29, 2009, was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which overturned the 180-day statute of limitations for women to contest pay discrimination. It was an important down-payment in ending the pay gap and keeping the courthouse doors open. In January, President Obama renewed his call for Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act in his State of the Union Address.

The legislation would require employers to demonstrate that wage gaps between men and women doing the same work have a business justification and are truly a result of factors other than gender. The bill would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their co-workers.

While women still make on average 77 cents to every dollar made by a male, the Paycheck Fairness Act builds on the promise of the Equal Pay Act, passed more than 50 years ago on June 10, 1963. It helps close the pay gap by empowering women to negotiate for equal pay, closing loopholes courts have created in the law, creating strong incentives for employers to obey the laws and strengthening federal outreach and enforcement efforts.

State-by-state data on the wage gap is available here.

The Paycheck Fairness Act also would strengthen the Department of Labor’s (DOL) ability to help women achieve pay equity by requiring DOL to enhance outreach and training efforts to work with employers in order to eliminate pay disparities and to continue to collect and disseminate wage information based on gender. The bill would also create a competitive grant program to provide negotiation skills training programs for girls and women.



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