Media Coverage
Source: Law360
Media Coverage
01.29.16
Last week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a proposal to require more compensation data from federal contractors and other business employing more than 100 workers. The EEOC says the data will aid its efforts to discover compensation discrimination.
While the announcement certainly has symbolic significance, Employment special counsel Julia Judish told Law360 its initial practical impact is debatable.
“The collection of compensation data by EEO-1 job category and ‘pay band’ is unlikely to unearth discrimination. To establish discrimination, one must rule out legitmate job-related factors as explanations for compensation differences,” she said. “EEO-1 job categories group together employees with different job types, responsibilities, qualifications, years of experience and performance levels. For example, a hospital may employ physicians, audiologists, graphic designers, registered nurses, lawyers, medivac helicopter pilots, translators and chaplains. All of these jobs fall under the EEO-1 ‘Professionals’ category, without having comparable salaries. Reporting combined total W-2 earnings for these varied jobs has little practical utility.”
Read more about the EEOC pay data proposal on Law360 (subscription required).