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Senate
Democrats are preparing to move forward a bill supported by President
Barack Obama's administration that would apply tougher standards to
employers defending themselves against claims of sex discrimination on
wages.
Women’s rights activist Lilly Ledbetter,
left, acknowledges President Barack Obama as she speaks in the East Room
of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 8, 2014, during an
event marking Equal Pay Day. The president also announce new executive
actions to strengthen enforcement of equal pay laws for women. The
president and his Democratic allies in Congress are making a concerted
election-year push to draw attention to women's wages, linking Obama
executive actions with pending Senate legislation aimed at closing a
compensation gender gap that favors men. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Obama signs actions taking aim at gender pay gap
By JIM KUHNHENN and ALAN FRAM
| The Associated Press
Washington • In a concerted election-year
push to draw attention to women’s wages, President Barack Obama signed
directives Tuesday that would make it easier for workers of federal
contractors to get information about workplace compensation. He seasoned
his move with a sharp rebuke of Republicans whom he accused of "gumming
up the works" on workplace fairness.
Obama made a clear partisan appeal to women as
he issued an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from
retaliating against workers who discuss their pay. He also directed the
Labor Department to write rules requiring federal contractors to provide
aggregate compensation data by race and gender.
"This is about Republicans seemingly opposing
any efforts to even the playing field for working families," Obama said
at a White House signing ceremony, surrounded by women advocates and
accompanied by Lilly Ledbetter, a woman whose namesake legislation on
pay equity was the first bill Obama signed into law in 2009.
Obama’s executive order and directive to the
Labor Department dovetailed with the start of Senate debate on broader
legislation that would make it easier for workers to sue companies for
paying women less because of their gender. That legislation is expected
to fail, as it has in the past, due to Republican opposition.
White the president’s actions affect only
federal contractors, those directives can have a wide and direct impact.
Federal contracting covers nearly one-quarter of the U.S. workforce and
includes companies ranging from Boeing to small parts suppliers and
service providers. Such actions also can be largely symbolic, designed
to spur action in the broader economy.
The Senate legislation, like Obama’s narrower
executive order, would forbid companies from punishing workers who share
salary information and would allow punitive and compensatory damages in
lawsuits. It also would make it harder for companies to prove that
disparities in pay are not gender based and would make it easier to file
class action lawsuits.
Some Republican women were considering proposing a narrower bill as an alternative.
The National Labor Relations Board and some
federal courts already have determined that company pay secrecy rules
are prohibited under the National Labor Relations Act. But cases against
violators can only be brought by the NLRB on the basis of a complaint.
The Senate bill would spell out the prohibition and allow private
lawsuits, which could be more financially penalizing than NLRB actions.
"Pay secrecy fosters discrimination, and we should not tolerate it, not in federal contracting or anywhere else," Obama said.
Obama’s executive actions are part of his drive
to act on his own when Congress stalls on his policy initiatives. The
executive order and the presidential memorandum to the Labor Department
are his latest directives on wages, pay disparities and hiring targeting
the federal government’s vast array of contractors and subcontractors.
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That coordinated effort to appeal to women comes amid varying measures of what the wage gap may actually be.
Obama cited Census Bureau figures show that the
annual earnings of women were 77 percent of what men earned in 2012, a
difference that has barely budged over the past decade.
But when measured by hourly earnings, that
difference is a narrower 86 percent, according to the federal Bureau of
Labor Statistics. The larger gap is in part because women tend to work
fewer hours than men and because the annual figures includes items
omitted from the hourly data, including tips and bonuses. An analysis of
2012 data by the Pew Research Center placed the discrepancy at 84 cents
for women for every $1 made by men.
Underscoring the politics behind the efforts,
Democrats were aggressively soliciting campaign contributions, accusing
Republicans of standing in the way of pay equity. Democratic Sens.
Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Chris Coons of Delaware, for
instance, sent out emails Tuesday drawing attention to the pay gap and
directing supporters to a contribution site that was compiling donations
for House and Senate Democrats.
Republicans argued that the Senate legislation would hurt women by restricting job flexibility and merit pay.
"The fact is many women seek jobs that provide
more flexibility for their families over more money, which is the choice
that I made as a young working mom. It is my choice, and I don’t
understand why Democrats won’t respect my choices," Rep. Lynn Jenkins,
R-Kan., said.
At a news conference, five male Democratic
senators said the issue of equalizing pay for men and women was more
than a women’s issue.
"Rebuilding the middle class begins with
good-paying jobs. And those good-paying jobs won’t happen if women are
systematically denied fair pay simply based on their gender," said Sen.
Jack Reed, D-R.I.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate’s
No. 3 Democratic leader, said equalizing pay for men and women was a
popular issue and warned Republicans opposing the measure, "We’re going
to come back to this issue several times this year."
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