Businesses try to quash federal equal pay project
WASHINGTON Business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pressuring the Trump administration to kill an Obama-era initiative designed to reduce wage disparities by requiring big employers to report pay data based on race, gender and ethnicity.
The Obama administration had proposed the new requirement to bolster federal investigations of pay discrimination and encourage employers to evaluate their own pay practices as women’s salaries continue to lag behind those of men.
But an ad-hoc coalition of business associations asked President Donald Trump’s budget office to review and reject the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s requirement, saying the data collection is too onerous and expensive.
“If ever there was a regulation that imposed an incredible amount of burden with no utility ... it’s this one,” said Randy Johnson, a senior vice president with the Chamber. “It was pushed through under the prior administration because it met a political goal. But as far as the substance and merits, there just isn’t any that would justify it being kept on the books.”
Johnson said the Office of Management and Budget hasn’t responded to a March 20 letter the Chamber sent with 26 other business associations to the director, Mick Mulvaney, requesting the review. But he said the issue is among the Chamber’s top labor priorities.
“I think the agency will take care of this,” he said. “It’s such a gross abuse of regulatory power on the part of the EEOC.”
Trump’s stance on pay equity has been somewhat murky.
He has said he supports pay based on performance, but he expressed concerns in 2015 about equal pay legislation if “everybody ends up making the same pay,” likening such a result to “a socialist society.” His daughter Ivanka, however, pledged during the campaign that her father would fight for “equal pay for equal work” and has said she is “very passionate” about fighting for wage equality.
Lisa Maatz, with the American Association of University Women, said, “We would like to see this be a place where they take a stand. All you have to do is look at the Women’s March to know that people care about these issues, they’re watching and we’re not going away.”
The White House and EEOC did not respond to requests for comment; OMB said it is reviewing the request.
Women working full time in the U.S. were typically paid 80 percent of what men were paid in 2015, and the pay gap was worse for women of color, according to a 2017 AAUW study. Part of the reason may be a concentration of women in lower paying jobs or women working fewer hours, but experts also cite discrimination as a contributing factor.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said the initiative to collect pay data was one of the most important things he worked on to address the pay equity gap for women when he was President Barack Obama’s Labor secretary.
“I don’t understand why any company who wants to retain their workforce and recruit the best and brightest talent wouldn’t want to keep this data so that they understand, ‘Do we have a problem?’ ” Perez said in an interview with USA TODAY. “This is not rocket science. This is about fundamental fairness.”
Employers have long reported data about numbers of employees by job category, gender and ethnicity or race.