March 5, 2010
Barely a year after enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, the Senate will begin work next week on another bill that would seek to address pay discrimination by compiling a federal database of company-specific pay data, among other things. The Senate HELP Committee will hold a hearing next week on the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12/S. 182), which was passed by the House in January 2009, the same day it passed the Ledbetter bill. The Ledbetter bill dealt solely with the statute of limitations for discrimination claims affecting pay. As described in an HR Policy analysis, the Paycheck Fairness bill is far more sweeping in its impact, including:
- raising the bar for employer defenses against pay discrimination claims to a "business necessity" standard, thus jeopardizing pay differences caused by legitimate factors such as education, experience, training and market rates;
- mandating the collection of wage data from employers for disclosure to the general public;
- easing restrictions on bringing equal pay class action lawsuits; and
- allowing unlimited compensatory and punitive damages for Equal Pay Act claims.
However, EEOC data indicate the hearing is pushing a solution in search of a problem as the number of Equal Pay Act charges represents just 1.0 percent of all discrimination EEOC charges and the number of charges has decreased over the past 17 years.