Dive Brief:
- According to The Hill, industry groups told Congress that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC's) pay reporting requirement is burdensome on employers and therefore must end. The Obama administration mandate requires employers with 100 or more employees to report pay information by race and gender to uncover wage discrimination. The pay reporting rule is scheduled to begin in March 2018.
- In a report to the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, Rae Vann, vice president and general counsel of the Equal Employment Advisory Council, said businesses determine pay using several criteria, which she said isn't necessarily a discriminatory practice.
- The rule could be rescinded or reformed under the The Paperwork Reduction Act, Camille Olson, chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Equal Employment Opportunity Subcommittee, says The Hill. But Todd Cox, director of policy for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that calling the EEOC's data collection flawed doesn't diminish the need to end pay discrimination.
Dive Insight:
Pay discrepancy is a pernicious problem, and the Obama administration adopted the rule in an attempt to ensure pay fairness. But many employers are concerned about the heavy compliance burden of said rule and the energy it will take to gather the large amounts of data required.
It's certainly not an easy issue to solve. An ADP study found that variable pay, which includes bonuses and other compensation beyond base pay, accounts for some of the differences in pay among employees for the same work. Variable pay has resulted in a 28% wage gap between women and men. However, the study also found that women received fewer bonuses than men, which could indicate bias.
Employers should be prepared to comply with the pay-recording rule, even though it could be rescinded under the Trump administration. Employers also must ensure that wages, including variable pay, aren't determined by bias.
