Gender Pay Gap Targeted By Executive Actions, Senate Vote

Federal contractors will be prohibited from taking action against employees who inquire about or discuss how much money they make under an executive order President Barack Obama plans to sign today.  Another executive order slated for today will require government contractors to report compensation statistics, including the sex and race of employees. Further down Pennsylvania Ave, the Senate will take a procedural vote this week on a bill that would require all employers to pay men and women equally for doing the same work.

The executive orders are in response to a major concern for equal pay advocates – that secrecy around employee compensation helps perpetuate unfair pay structures,  and they. are coordinated to line up with National Equal Pay Day.  That’s  the date the National Committee on Pay Equity says women would have to work to this year in order to bring their 2013 pay to the level that men earned in the prior calendar year. The federal government estimates that women still make just 77 cents for every dollar men earn. The orders represent “a huge victory for the one in five American workers employed by federal contractors,” Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU senior legislative counsel and co-chair of the National Paycheck Fairness Coalition, said in a statement. “Congress still needs to do its part and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, but we’re one step closer to achieving pay equity thanks to this White House.”

The Paycheck Fairness Act, brought by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) April 1, would strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and bar retaliation against all workers who ask about their employers’ pay practices or inquire about their own wages. It would allow women to receive the same remedies for sex-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subjected to discrimination based on race and ethnicity. “Women should no longer be sidelined, redlined or pink slipped,” Mikulski said in a statement.

The Republican National Committee, however, called the Paycheck Fairness Act “misleading,” and RNC spokesman Kirsten Kukowski said in a statement the bill would “cut flexibility and cut bonuses.”

Update [April 9]: President Obama signed the two executive orders April 8, but Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a national equal pay bill.