Philadelphia, Pa
White House to announce steps aimed at narrowing gender, racial pay gap for federal workers
The steps embrace a brand new regulation throughout the federal workforce banning the usage of prior wage historical past within the hiring and pay-setting processes for workers, which the administration mentioned in a truth sheet can “assist break the cycle of previous arbitrary and doubtlessly discriminatory pay that may observe girls and staff of colour from job to job, entrenching gender and racial pay gaps over time.”
President Joe Biden will even signal an govt order to restrict federal contractors’ entry to the earlier pay historical past of candidates and workers when figuring out salaries, and the administration mentioned it’ll search to make sure equitable entry to “good-paying” jobs, noting the “relative underrepresentation” of girls in lots of well-compensated occupations.
“For over 25 years, Equal Pay Day has helped draw consideration to gender-based pay disparities by highlighting how far into a brand new 12 months a lady should work, on common, to earn what a person did within the earlier 12 months,” Biden mentioned Monday in a proclamation.
“This 12 months, Equal Pay Day falls on March 15, the earliest we’ve got ever marked the event. The sooner that Equal Pay Day arrives, the nearer our Nation has come to reaching pay equity. However whereas we should always have a good time the progress we’ve got made, as I’ve mentioned up to now, we shouldn’t be happy till Equal Pay Day is now not essential in any respect,” he added.
WATCH: Our America: Ladies Ahead
Biden will even ship remarks marking the event.
In line with Division of Labor estimates launched Tuesday, Black girls misplaced $39.3 billion and Hispanic girls misplaced $46.7 billion in wages in 2019 in contrast with their White male counterparts on account of their participation in what the division phrases “low-wage sectors” like caregiving and hospitality.
“Ladies have — notably girls of colour — have traditionally been in jobs overrepresented in sectors the place they’re paid much less,” a senior administration official advised reporters Monday. “The administration is rising entry to good-paying jobs for ladies and other people of colour in sectors the place jobs are being created … and the place girls have traditionally been underrepresented.”
Harris shall be joined at Tuesday’s gathering by present and former members of the US Ladies’s Nationwide Group, who reached a $24 million settlement final month on an equal pay dispute with US Soccer. The dispute, which dated again to a March 2019 gender-discrimination lawsuit in opposition to US Soccer, was resolved with each events agreeing to equal charges of pay for ladies’s and males’s nationwide groups.
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Workplace of Personnel Administration Director Kiran Ahuja and different Cupboard secretaries are additionally anticipated to take part in Tuesday’s assembly.
The bulletins are anticipated to construct on different steps the administration has taken, together with in its Covid-19 reduction package deal, which supplied monetary help for baby care staff. The White Home estimates that greater than 9 in 10 baby care staff are girls, and greater than 4 in 10 are girls of colour.
In Monday’s proclamation, Biden repeated requires Congress to cross the Paycheck Equity Act, which he mentioned “would assist mitigate sex-based pay discrimination whereas guaranteeing better transparency and reporting of disparities in wages.”
The invoice, which did not clear the Senate final 12 months, would “present more practical treatments to victims of discrimination within the fee of wages on the idea of intercourse,” in response to the legislative textual content.
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