Mississippi
Mississippi set to become final state with equal pay law
JACKSON, Miss.
Mississippi will develop into the ultimate state with a legislation requiring equal pay for equal work by men and women.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed Home Invoice 770 on Wednesday, and it’ll develop into legislation July 1.
A 1963 federal legislation requires equal pay for equal work, however Mississippi has the one state with out its personal legislation since Alabama enacted one in 2019.
The Mississippi legislation says a lawsuit should be filed inside two years of when a employee “knew or ought to have identified” about pay discrepancies.
If the pay discrimination lawsuit is profitable, the employer must enhance wages of the lower-paid employee quite than lower wages of the higher-paid one, mentioned Home Judiciary A Committee Chairwoman Angela Cockerham, an unbiased from Magnolia who pushed for the laws.
The legislation says companies with a minimum of 5 workers should pay equal wages to men and women who work full-time jobs that require “equal ability, schooling, effort and accountability” and which can be finished “underneath related working situations.”
A number of exceptions are allowed, together with seniority, advantage, amount or high quality of manufacturing and “any issue apart from intercourse,” together with wage historical past and whether or not there was competitors to rent an worker.
Cassandra Welchlin, chief of the Mississippi Black Ladies’s Roundtable, advocates for equal pay however mentioned the brand new legislation is “dangerous” as a result of it might enable an employer to pay a lady lower than a person based mostly on the pay historical past that employees deliver into new jobs.
A 2017 report by the Mississippi College Analysis Heart confirmed girls earned 27% lower than males for full-time work in Mississippi, in comparison with a 19% wage hole nationwide. The examine mentioned a few of the hole could possibly be defined by the kinds of jobs men and women had been working, however the unexplained wage hole remained about 18% in Mississippi and about 15% nationwide.