HARRISBURG (TNS) — An overhaul of Pennsylvania’s Equal Pay Law — amending the statute to include race and ethnicity, protections for pay history, stiffer penalties, and more — passed the state House Monday on a party-line vote.
“This is a step toward economic justice,” said Rep. Donna Bullock, D-Philadelphia. “We moved this legislation forward to ensure all Pennsylvania workers receive equal pay for equal work and eradicate wage disparity once and for all. It’s time for the Senate to do the same.”
The bill’s future in the Republican-controlled Senate is less certain, particularly given the unified opposition Monday from the GOP minority in the House, whose members voiced fears that the proposal was too far-reaching and would be difficult for employers to follow.
The Pennsylvania Equal Pay Law dates to 1959, and in its current form forbids wage discrimination on the basis of sex. The bill passed by House Democrats on Monday would expand this to race and ethnicity, and remove an exemption for employees covered by the federal minimum wage law (federal hourly wage laws include a prohibition on sex discrimination but not race and ethnicity).
The bill would also replace a number of definitions in the existing law, changing the current standard of “equal skill, effort and responsibility” to simply say that employees cannot be paid differently for “comparable work” solely because of their sex, race, or ethnicity.
The bill also provides much more detailed definitions for allowable pay differentials, such as those based on seniority and merit; these include specifying that job title alone is not sufficient justification for unequal pay, and that family and medical leave cannot be counted against seniority.
Employers would also be forbidden under the bill from requiring prospective employees to disclose their wage history or from retaliating against employees who discuss their wages, among other protections intended to prevent employers from low-balling workers’ pay.
Further, the bill would give the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry subpoena power in equal pay investigations, and hike fines for violators to a minimum of $2,500 and a maximum of $5,000 per employee per day, in addition to punitive damages paid to the employee.
The labor department would need an additional $1.2 million to hire a dozen extra investors to handle the expanded law, according to a House staff note, plus $2 million for database upgrades to track claims.
The median woman who works full time in Pennsylvania earns about 82% of the equivalent male worker, according to federal data, on par with the national ratio. This gap has remained relatively constant for the last 20 years, according to federal numbers, after the gender pay gap narrowed significantly in the 1980s and ‘90s.
That gap cannot be entirely explained by maternal breaks in employment or education differences that would make women’s jobs less lucrative, according to a recent analysis from Pew Research. Pay disparity with men is roughly the same for women with children as it is for those without, Pew found; the gap gets wider as women age and has not narrowed in proportion with the increased number of women going to college over the past several decades.
Similar gaps are also seen between racial groups, the analysis found, with Black and Hispanic women seeing the largest pay inequality relative to white men.
