GAO Report Reveals that EEOC, OFCCP Are Not Adequately Monitoring Pay Disparities
Unveiling the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on September 10, 2008, Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) assailed the Bush Administration for its failure to crack down on pay disparities in the workplace. The report, entitled Women’s Earnings: Federal Agencies Should Better Monitor Their Performance in Enforcing Anti-Discrimination Laws (GAO-08-799), revealed that both the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) are not adequately monitoring the enforcement of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), the sex discrimination provisions of Title VII and Executive Order 11246. In particular, the report found that the EEOC, which is charged with enforcing the EPA and Title VII, does not monitor its gender pay performance in a comprehensive manner. The OFCCP’s data and performance monitoring, as well as its compliance and enforcement efforts, is similarly limited, according to the report. The GAO will release the results from the second half of its study, which focuses on the private sector, between January and March of 2009.
“I am deeply disturbed we cannot even get an accurate accounting of the Administration’s enforcement of laws protecting equal pay for women,” said Harkin. “Thanks to GAO, we will have a better understanding of uphill battle we have to fight to ensure equality for women in the workplace. Now, it’s up to Congress to pass laws to rectify these injustices so that women get the fair, equal pay that they deserve.”
In light of the findings, the senators reiterated their call for the Senate to pass three bills addressing disparate pay in the workplace: (1) the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338/S. 766); (2) the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831); and (3) the Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2019/S. 1087). The House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would impose stiffer penalties against employers who violate the EPA, prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their coworkers and require that employers who make legitimate employment decisions based on “factors other than sex” prove those factors are “job-related” and “consistent with business necessity,” by a vote of 247 to 178. The Paycheck Fairness Act has not come to a vote in the Senate. Similarly, the House passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would specify that discriminatory pay decisions or other discriminatory practices that start the 180-day time period for filing a charge of discrimination with the EEOC occur each time a discriminatory paycheck is issued, by vote of 225 to 199. The Senate fell four votes short of the 60 required to invoke cloture and proceed to floor debate and a vote on final passage on the Ledbetter bill. “The Federal government should be leading the charge in closing the wage gap but this report makes clear that the Bush Administration is shirking its responsibility. We must hold the Bush Administration accountable for enforcing equal pay requirements already on the books and we must finally end the pay inequity that is short-changing women and families by enacting the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act,” said Clinton.
Dated August 11, the GAO report found that the EEOC “does not monitor its gender pay performance in a comprehensive manner” The EEOC regularly monitors performance information —such as the timeliness and outcome of charges —by applicable statute. As such, it can monitor performance for gender pay enforcement under the EPA, which deals exclusively with gender pay issues, but not under Title VII —under which more than half of gender pay charges are filed. “As a result, EEOC lacks a complete picture to help identify trends, help set agency priorities, and understand the extent to which gender pay enforcement efforts specifically contribute to its overall performance goals,” according to the report. The OFCCP, which enforces EO 11246’s prohibition against sex discrimination (among other things) by federal contractors, “does not monitor the extent to which its gender pay enforcement efforts contribute to the agency’s overall performance goals, although OFCCP has access to fairly detailed information on specific types of discrimination that could be used for this purpose.”
In the report, the GAO recommended that the EEOC and OFCCP monitor performance of their enforcement efforts related to gender pay and that the OFCCP ensure its planned, new data system uses reliable data, measures performance of its outreach efforts, evaluates the mathematical model used to target contractors, provides links between pertinent guidance and devises a unique violation code to track any non-compliance with the self-evaluation requirement.
The GAO's report can be found at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08799.pdf?source=ra EXE: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08799.pdf?source=ra.
Reprinted with permission. © CCH
<p>GAO Report Reveals that EEOC, OFCCP Are Not Adequately Monitoring Pay Disparities Unveiling the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on September 10, 2008, Senators Tom Harkin (D Iowa) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D NY) assailed the</p>
GAO Report Reveals that EEOC, OFCCP Are Not Adequately Monitoring Pay Disparities
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