Politics
Obama signs executive order that will enforce pay equity for women
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.
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 dollar earned 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.
