Obama To Move On Closing Wage Gap

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day and the Obama Administration intends to mark the occasion by taking two actions that will move us forward (albeit slowly) on making compensation fairer across gender lines.

The first measure is meant to prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation. The White House official stressed that the order will neither compel workers to discuss their pay nor employers to reveal salaries.

The order, however, “does provide a critical tool to encourage pay transparency, so workers have a potential way of discovering violations of equal pay laws and able to seek appropriate remedies,” the official said, though details would not be revealed until Tuesday.

Obama will also sign a Presidential Memorandum directing Labor Secretary Tom Perez to draft new regulations requiring contractors to report summary pay information – including data on race and sex – to the agency, the official said.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.