Nilan Johnson Lewis’ latest content on pay equity issues for employers.
Posted July 18, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Many corporate employers throughout the United States have recognized the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) as a matter of social justice, employee engagement and brand protection. These companies have adopted robust DEI plans, including pay equity efforts, and …
Posted July 18, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As we previously reported here, in 2019 Colorado passed a pay transparency law requiring employers to (1) disclose in their job postings the pay ranges and benefits for their Colorado jobs, and (2) make information about promotional opportunities known to …
Posted July 18, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
We previously reported that several states have enacted safe harbors for employers who proactively audit their pay practices and remediate any observed equal pay violations. Now Rhode Island has joined the fray. The state’s new pay equity law, which became …
Posted April 13, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
For multi-state employers tracking pay transparency laws requiring salary ranges in job postings, recent amendments to the New York law provide welcome clarity. In its original form, the New York law would have required most employers to provide a range …
Posted April 13, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As we posted about previously, in September 2022, California passed significant expansions of its pay transparency and pay data reporting laws, but many key questions about the law’s scope and application remained unclear. Payscale Posting Clarifications On the pay scale …
Posted April 13, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Pay transparency laws are popping up across the country, forcing employers to comply with a patchwork of new, untested regulations. One aspect of these new laws that has caused employers to stumble is the requirement that job postings contain clear …
Posted April 13, 2023 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Employers concerned with state and federal equal pay requirements are now facing a new potential concern: antitrust issues. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has announced an intent to prosecute employers who share compensation data that implicates antitrust concerns. Employers …
Posted December 18, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
In recent years, equal pay legislation has taken a new form. Gone are the days in which recruiters must merely avoid questions about prior salary history. Now, various states require recruiters to respond to requests about the expected salary for …
Posted December 18, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As 2022 draws to a close, employers are preparing for holiday parties, analyzing their staffing, and assessing compensation for the coming year in light of significant inflationary pressures and historically low unemployment rates. One item employers should consider is pay …
Posted December 18, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Starting January 1, 2023, California employers will need to comply with expanded pay transparency obligations. And, starting May 10, 2023 (and annually thereafter), they will need to make changes to their annual California pay data reports. While those deadlines are …
Posted September 20, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Most recruiters and hiring managers are familiar with the concept of “prohibited questions” during the hiring process—topics the employer should avoid affirmatively raising during the interview to steer clear of potential discrimination. But as state and local governments pass legislation …
Posted September 20, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
New York City’s pay transparency law is making waves through New York as two local governments passed similar legislation. The first to follow suit was the city of Ithaca, which enacted an almost identical pay transparency ordinance to the one …
Posted September 20, 2022 with Tags Corporate Immigration, Immigration Law, The Equal Pay Advisor
States, municipalities, and other local regulatory entities continue to impose additional pay transparency requirements upon employers hiring in various jurisdictions throughout the United States. In some locations, employers are required to provide a position’s pay ranges to job applicants upon …
Posted March 2, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
There’s no time like the present to conduct a pay equity audit. This year, employers face historic competition to recruit and retain talent. With continued pressure to increase DE&I efforts and a wave of new pay equity laws, a pay …
Posted March 2, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
New York City will soon be joining the growing list of jurisdictions that have passed pay transparency laws. Effective May 15, 2022, employers with at least four employees in New York City will be required to disclose the minimum and …
Posted March 2, 2022 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Basic Reporting Requirements in Each State Illinois Who is a covered employer? For purposes of the new requirement to report pay data to the Illinois Secretary of State, covered employers are Illinois corporations or foreign corporations authorized to transact …
Posted November 16, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Over the last few years, employers across the United States have become accustomed to dealing with a patchwork of state pay equity requirements, including some that give employees the right to request and openly discuss and disclose their wages. A handful of states and municipalities have gone farther, enacting pay transparency schemes under which employers must affirmatively disclose the pay ranges for a position. States that impose some kind of pay transparency requirement include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, Rhode Island, Washington. These states, and others, have recently adopted new or revised pay equity statutes imposing additional requirements upon employers.
Posted November 16, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Employers in the not-to-distant past constructed pay scales based in part on the location of the employees. Employers routinely paid employees in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles a premium. By 2021, however, the concept of a worksite has been exploded, and employees work virtually from across the country. This change has dramatic implications for employers analyzing whether to structure pay scales tailored to geographic locales.
Posted November 16, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many areas of the employment landscape. Job descriptions, essential functions, ADA accommodations, undue hardship, and Title VII religious accommodations are all areas that have been substantially impacted by the virtual work environment and the availability of mechanisms such as Zoom to substitute for physical attendance. Pay equity analyses are just the latest area to be impacted by the virtual environment. Employers may need to rethink how they conduct their pay equity analyses going forward.
Posted September 9, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Effective October 1, 2021, Connecticut employers will face a host of new pay transparency obligations. In addition, they will need to analyze—and defend—pay difference under a new, more expansive framework. With respect to transparency, the new law will require employers …
Posted September 9, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
The California Equal Pay Act (CEPA) recognizes a few exceptions to the general bar on pay differentials between genders: a seniority system, a merit system, a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production, or “a bona fide …
Posted September 9, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Nevada and Rhode Island will soon join the growing list of state and local governments prohibiting employers from requesting salary history from applicants, the most common form of pay equity legislation. As employers transition to remote workforces and attract applicants …
Posted September 9, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Publicly held corporations are facing increasing pressure from a variety of sources to disclose their diversity and pay equity data. Legislative and regulatory changes, activist shareholder groups, and public campaigns are beginning to have an impact. Although most corporations do …
Posted May 24, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
After a year unlike any other, colleges and universities are grappling with historical challenges. While adjusting to reduced attendance, converting to online programming, and ensuring a healthy and safe environment, many higher education institutions operated with significant budget shortfalls. The resulting furloughs, layoffs, and work reductions may add a wrinkle—pay equity complaints.
Posted May 24, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Many states across the country have adopted new or revised equal pay laws in an effort to address pay inequities in the workplace. Illinois joined that list with March 22, 2021 amendments to the Illinois Equal Pay Act of 2003 and Illinois Business Corporation Act, which took immediate effect. The amendments require employers to assemble, submit, and, in some cases, even publish demographic and pay equity data.
Posted May 24, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
During the Trump Administration, equal pay advocates focused their attention on legislative and regulatory changes at the state and local levels. These advocates believed change was impossible at the federal level. Still, they successfully convinced states to revise their equal pay statutes and enhance state-level protections against pay inequities. However, with the changing of the White House, pay equity advocates have refocused their attention back on the federal government.
Posted April 5, 2021 with Tags Labor and Employment, Pay equity, The Equal Pay Advisor
Pay equity advocates have used a variety of mechanisms to pressure employers to prioritize pay equity in the workplace. These efforts include shareholder resolutions regarding pay equity, threats of divestiture, and public campaigns against particular employers. Recently, pay equity advocates have unveiled a new tactic to enhance pressure on public corporations to prioritize pay equity: failure to comply with their own pay equity promises. These lawsuits signal a new front in the activist war against perceived pay inequities.
Posted March 3, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
As part of its continuing efforts to combat pay discrimination, California enacted a new pay data reporting law at the end of 2020. The law requires certain employers to submit annual reports to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), detailing their California employees’ yearly compensation and hours worked based on job category, race, ethnicity, and gender classifications. Pay data reports for the 2020 reporting year are due on March 31, 2021. Employers who will be subject to these reporting requirements should ensure they understand and collect the information needed to complete the report on time.
Posted March 3, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Over the last few years, employers have seen pay equity issues impact investor relations, recruiting, and branding. Recent developments have further accentuated these risks and created even more pay equity concerns for employers.
Posted March 3, 2021 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Employers that provided EEO-1 Component Two pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or are currently preparing to provide data to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) as part of California’s new pay data reporting requirement, are doubtless interested in learning how the agencies will use the data. One likely answer is that the EEOC and DFEH will use employer’s data to identify instances of “intersectional” pay discrimination. That is, claims of pay discrimination that involve the combination of two or more protected classes (such as race and gender), which are also commonly referred to as “gender-plus” claims (e.g., gender-plus-race).
Posted July 14, 2020 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Pay inequities can create government regulatory problems with the EEOC and OFCCP, for example, and can also present litigation risks in the form of government lawsuits or private class actions. But pay equity issues also can result in brand and morale challenges that may ultimately be more significant than those in the regulatory and litigation contexts. Because of new, creative tactics from advocacy groups, as well as changes in the societal and media environments, employers should place greater focus on the brand and morale aspects of pay equity.
Posted July 14, 2020 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
There are some legal risks associated with COVID-related changes in the workplace that deserve more attention than they have received to date. One of these is the potential for gender-based imbalances in compensation, promotions, and other conditions of employment.
Posted March 2, 2020 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
The rising tide of state pay equity legislation shows no sign of abating, with several new laws set to become effective in 2020 and 2021. Many of these laws differ from the federal Equal Pay Act by defining comparable work more broadly, limiting the factors on which employers can rely to justify pay disparities, and imposing additional penalties. A handful of the laws also attempt to balance these new burdens on employers by creating “safe harbors” for those who proactively assess and address their pay gaps.
Posted March 1, 2020 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Check out this 2-minute video on what's going on with EEO-1 reporting.
Posted October 24, 2019 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
New pay equity requirements have already taken effect in 2019 in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Oregon, and the State of Washington. And this trend isn’t slowing down, as even more requirements are slated to take effect in fall 2019 and beyond, including in Colorado, Oregon, New York, and New Jersey. Employers should take care to review their recruiting, interviewing, and other hiring practices—many of these new laws join the growing, nationwide trend banning pre-employment inquiries about salary history.
Posted October 23, 2019 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
In recent years, some investors have grown increasingly vocal about pay equity issues, with a few investor funds calling on companies to publish compensation data by gender. While the intentions are commendable, its approach is problematic because the median pay gap is easily misinterpreted as a measure of “all things being equal.”
Posted May 15, 2019 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Larger employers concerned about the deadline for submitting pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently learned that they must submit pay data by September 30, 2019.
Posted May 15, 2019 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
No area of labor and employment law has seen more state attention in the last two years than pay equity. California, New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland have passed legislation facilitating equal pay litigation and imposing additional regulatory requirements upon employers. 2019 promises to continue that trend.
Posted May 15, 2019 with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor
Equal pay issues are receiving a great deal of attention in the media, at regulatory agencies, and in various state legislatures. Given all this attention, it is unsurprising plaintiffs’ law firms have been quick to jump on the equal pay bandwagon. Experienced plaintiffs’ class action firms have launched a variety of equal pay class or collective actions against employers. And those law firms have deployed a sophisticated array of tools to prosecute those claims.
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