Paycheck Fairness Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESPAILLAT. Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I include in the Record a letter from the Equal Rights Advocates in support of H.R. 7. Equal Rights Advocates, April 14, 2021. Re Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 7) and vote no on harmful amendments.

Dear Representative: As the House votes on the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 7), Equal Rights Advocates strongly urges you to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, H.R. 7, without amendments that limit its scope or undermine its critical protections.

Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) is a national, non-profit legal organization based in San Francisco, California, whose mission is to protect and expand economic and educational access and opportunities for women and girls. We have a long history of working to address pay discrimination and to close the gender wage gap. We have litigated numerous cases relating to pay discrimination and regularly provide information and resources to employees who contact our free legal information hotline regarding unlawful gender and race-based pay disparities.

We also advocate for various bills at the state-level to ensure economic and gender justice for women and families. Most recently, ERA has co-sponsored SB 973 (Jackson, 2020) which requires California employers with 100 employees or more to submit an annual pay data report to the Department of Industrial Relations outlining the compensation and hours worked of its employees by gender, race, ethnicity, and job category. This allows state agencies to more efficiently identify patterns of wage disparities and encourages employers to analyze their own pay practices to ensure they are fair and lawful. Additionally, ERA co-sponsored the California Fair Pay Act, SB 358, (Jackson, 2016) which amended and strengthened our state's Equal Pay Act to prohibit employer secrecy rules, clarify that workers must be paid equally to coworkers of another sex who perform substantially similar work, unless the employer proves that the disparity was due to a legitimate, job-related, bona fide factor not based on or derived from sex. We also cosponsored AB 168 (Eggman, 2017) which prohibits California employers from inquiring about prior salary and requires them to provide the pay Scale for a position in question upon reasonable request and AB 2282 (Eggman, 2018) which clarified that prior salary cannot be used on its own, or in combination with a lawful factor, to justify a wage differential under the California Equal Pay Act. Finally, ERA also chairs Equal Pay Today, a national collaboration of organizations working at the local, regional, and federal level to close the gender wage gap.

Today in the United States, despite the passage of previous equal pay legislation, including the critically important Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the gender pay gap remains pervasive. Women, even those who work full-time and year round, still only earn 80 cents to a man's dollar. This gives rise to a nationwide pay gap of $900 billion every year. For women of color, the pay gap is even larger. For every dollar earned by a non-Hispanic white man, Latina women earn only 53 cents, Native American women only 58 cents, and Black women only 61 cents. These large pay gaps, although of varying sizes across demographics of women, prove harmful to the economic security of women and families across the country. The negative economic consequences of these gender pay gaps are especially pronounced as ``mothers are primary or sole breadwinners in half of U.S. households with children.'' Of these female-headed households, one-quarter of them fall below the poverty line.

As it stands, the gender and race pay gaps are closing at a glacial pace. At current rates, the gender wage gap will not close until 2059. For women of color, the picture is even bleaker. It will not be until 2124 that Black women receive equal pay to white men and not until 2233 that Latinas receive the same. Now is the time for action.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is an important step in accelerating the closing of the gender pay gap. Among many provisions, the Paycheck Fairness Act would bar retaliation for discussing or disclosing wages. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, across the country, about half of workers were prohibited or strongly discouraged from disclosing their wages to other employees. Yet, when an individual is unable to discuss wages with other employees, it becomes exceedingly difficult to determine if one is making less than one's colleagues. By ending the practice of pay secrecy, the Paycheck Fairness Act would make it harder for employers to keep pervasive practices of pay discrimination hidden.

In addition, the Paycheck Fairness Act would also prohibit employers from relying on salary history when setting the wages of their employees. This provision is critical as the practice of relying on prior salary can lead to a single act of pay discrimination following a woman throughout her career. One year out of college, women are already earning 7 percent less than their male colleagues, even after controlling for factors such as college major, occupation, or hours worked. If a woman's prior salary is used by future employers, the gender pay gap will continue to persist as a depressed past salary continues to be used to determine future wages. Prohibiting employer reliance on salary history will help stop the perpetuation of unequal pay.

Another crucial provision in this version of the Paycheck Fairness Act is the commitment to pay data collection. As mentioned above, ERA fought for pay data collection at the California state-level and secured this via SB 973 (Jackson, 2020). The need to ensure equal pay is now more apparent than ever during the current COVID-19 health and economic crisis, which has exposed the lasting harm of unequal pay and other contributors to economic security on women, and in particular, women of color. Pay data collection helps uncover pay discrimination, which is a major contributor to the overall gender and race-based wage gaps.

Recognizing that pay discrimination is difficult to detect and address, the Obama Administration announced a proposed revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to include the reporting of pay data by gender, race and ethnicity beginning in 2018. For more than 50 years, large companies have been submitting these EEO-1 reports with demographic information to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This data has helped the agency to identify patterns of occupational segregation and discrimination and enforce federal equal pay and anti- discrimination law. However, the Trump Administration put a halt to the implementation of this new rule, dealing a significant blow to the fight for equal pay.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would also close loopholes that allow employers to pay women less without a legitimate business justification and would provide the same robust remedies for sex-based pay discrimination as race and ethnicity based discrimination. It would also require wage data collection and support salary negotiation skills training programs to give women the tools to advocate for higher wages. Salary negotiation workshops have been shown to be highly effective. For example, in a study conducted following the free salary negotiation workshops put on by the city of Boston, the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston found that nearly half of the women who were interviewed had either successfully negotiated a pay raise or starting salary that brought them either to or above the market rate following the training.

As the bill states, these continuing pay disparities have devastating impacts on women, especially women of color. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have found this to be even more true. Since last February, 2.4 million women have exited the workforce, or, been pushed out of the workforce, highlighting a dramatic regress for gender equity. More and more women are forced to stay home in order to care for children and loved ones while men continue to work. Before the pandemic, ``women did, on average, three times more unpaid care work than men, and this responsibility has heightened since the pandemic given school and childcare closures, and increased care needs for elderly relatives.'' Women who are able to remain in the workforce, however, are still paid less than their male colleagues, especially Black women and women of color. COVID-19 has exacerbated these long-standing gender and racial inequities. Now, more than ever, elected officials must recognize these disparate impacts and deliver solutions to American women.

Without continued efforts to provide women with the tools to challenge and unearth pay discrimination and provisions to keep employers from perpetuating persistent inequalities, the gender pay gap will not close. The Paycheck Fairness Act is an important step on the path towards a future where women can stand on equal economic footing to their male counterparts.

For these reasons, we are proud to support the Paycheck Fairness Act and urge you to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. Jessica Stender, Senior Counsel, Workplace Justice & Public Policy.

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Mr. ESPAILLAT. Mr. Speaker, it should offend every one of us that there remains a pay gap between men and women for the same work.

Women of color, in particular--African-American women, Latina women, Native American women, AAPI women--are making as low as 52 cents, Mr. Speaker, for every dollar for the same job and work by a man.

This is a travesty.

Let's make our communities stronger. Let's make our economy stronger.

In Harlem, East Harlem, northern Manhattan, and the northwest Bronx, women of color are the majority of workers. I can't go back home to my district and say that somehow they are working the same as men, or maybe more, in many cases, and are making less.

I support H.R. 7, the Paycheck Fairness Act, because we need to bring fairness into the discussion. Let's make our communities stronger. Let's make our economy stronger.

Gender-based pay discrimination should not be something we are still discussing now in 2021.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will put everyone on the line to make sure that we are all doing our best to ensure fair and equitable pay.

Closing the pay gap will make women and families financially stronger.

Mr. Speaker, let's make our communities stronger. Let's make our economy stronger.

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