(VitalNews.org) – The Biden Administration is adding a new action to the Landmark Pay Equity Law in order to mark its 15th-anniversary date. The new action would help to close pay gap differences between federal employees and federal contractor employees.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed in January 2009, stated that any change in pay due to any sort of discrimination would be illegal. Essentially, although this was signed years ago, there is still a difference in pay between women and men. According to Biden, women who work in the United States outside of the home can see an average of $.84 for every dollar that a male counterpart would get paid.
Barack Obama signed The Fair Pay Act with Joe Biden as Vice President. While working at Goodyear, Lilly Ledbetter discovered that she was getting paid less than her male counterpart who had the exact same job. This led to a lawsuit through the Supreme Court leading to the passing of this bill.
Joe Biden spoke out saying that the details of this new action would be announced on Monday and he said that it “will help pay millions of workers fairly, close gender and racial wage gaps, and yield tangible benefits for the federal government and federal contractors.”
In order to deliver this next step, The Office of Personnel Management plans to expand this act for fair pay by pursuing a new rule where federal institutions and contractors would not be able to decide on compensation or salary for a new employee based on their past pay or compensation. The benefit of this ruling is that it could help to limit pay discrimination and make sure that the person is paid based on their skill set.
This new ruling is being proposed by The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council and would prohibit federal contractors and subcontractors from allowing past salaries of workers to affect what they would be paid in a current federal position. In addition to this, it also proposed that these job postings have the salary listed on the posting itself.
According to Administration officials, this will “help federal contractors recruit, diversify and retain talent, improve job satisfaction and performance and reduce turnover.”
Many officials have recognized the improvement that’s come with the pay gaps, but they also recognize that there is more work to be done in order to completely close the pay gaps.
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