Volume 1, Issue 4 (August, 2007)

Gender-Based Pay Discrimination Bills Advance in Congress

The House Subcommittee on Worker Protections recently held a hearing to examine the Paycheck Fairness Act.  This bill would amend the Equal Pay Act by restricting the ability of an employer to defend a pay disparity “based on a bona fide factor other than sex.”  The bill would also make workers responsible for opting out of class action pay discrimination suits.  Currently, workers must opt in to these types of lawsuits.  The bill also provides new non-retaliation requirements and increased penalties against employers. 

The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007.  If it ultimately becomes law, the legislation would effectively overturn a Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, where the Court held that, in compensation cases, a discriminatory action cannot be the mere issuance of a paycheck to a worker, but rather the management decision to set a worker’s rate of compensation.  The timing is important because Title VII provides up to 300 days for a worker to file a claim with the EEOC.  The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would provide that each successive paycheck a worker receives would restart the clock for filing a claim with the EEOC.

Meeting Employee Needs in Today’s Labor Market

As companies change, benefit and compensation plans, they also are transforming the way they administer and communicate these programs, with an emphasis on more fully engaging employees, a recent survey shows.

The 2007 HR Technology Trends survey of 182 companies found that one in five expects to change its HR delivery structure in the coming year.  Among the most prominent changes companies expect to make in the next two years are putting in place a health care portal that provides employees with health improvement information (73 percent) and offering total compensation information to employees via the Web (65 percent).

Compensation and benefits continue to become more complicated at most companies.  With the variety of health plan choices and the number of changes in the pension arena, employees constantly hunger for more information.  As a result, there is a growing demand to put data at employees’ fingertips through Web-based tools.

Companies today need to plan on how they will communicate human resource related information to their employees in a communication mode that their employees are comfortable with – through the computer!