PAY POLICE: Obama Wants Employers To Start Giving EEOC Pay Data Next Year

There is, apparently, too much disparity in pay between men and women in the American workplace.
As a result, the Obama Administration—regardless of whether there is disparity in your workplace—wants companies to provide the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) with the compensation paid to employees, beginning in 2017.
via Seyfarth Shaw:

The EEOC announced its intention to submit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a major revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) which will require that all employers with more than 100 employees submit compensation data to the EEOC beginning in 2017.  At a White House ceremony, President Obama, Secretary of Labor Perez and EEOC Chair Yang announced the new initiative stating that the availability of pay data will allow the EEOC and the OFCCP to better target compensation issues and address pay disparities.
[…] Beginning in September 2017, employers with more than 100 employees would also be required to report on the W-2 earnings and hours worked for all employees by race/ethnicity and gender.  Federal contractors and subcontractors with between 50 and 99 employees will only be required to submit the current EEO-1 form without compensation data. [More here.]

Of course, this edict has already been applied to federal contractors for a while now. However the move to apply it to all employers (with 100 employees or more, for now) is a significant shift, as the lawyers point out:

It is difficult to overstate the impact that this could have on employer[s].
The EEOC explicitly says it will use the pay information to “discern potential pay discrimination.”  It will do so by comparing variations within and across job categories. However, the pay bands do not take into effect legally accepted variables, such as seniority, level of responsibility, and education.  We expect many false positive results with employers then needing to defend their compensation systems.

Obviously, if the proposed requirement goes into effect, the EEOC will be hiring a lot more data analysts to sift through the mountains of employer-provided data—and, even more so, when the mandate extends down to smaller employers (as it undoubtedly will at some point).

• Related: To Shine A Light On Salary Gaps, Obama Wants Companies To Disclose Pay Data

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