Dean R. Singewald, II, Associate in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management and Litigation practices, in the firm’s Stamford office, was quoted in Law360 Employment Authority, in “State Pay Equity Laws May Ease Path for EEOC Salary Survey,” by Anne Cullen. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
While the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's first attempt to collect salary details from employers faced strong headwinds, experts said the proliferation of state-level pay transparency mandates may make a fresh wage data collection effort an easier lift for businesses.
As part of President Joe Biden's regulatory agenda published Friday, the commission unveiled plans to survey employers on the salaries of their workforces, on top of the information it already gleans annually from employers on the demographics within their job categories.
The EEOC has tried to gather this information previously. EEO-1 Component 2, a pay data collection initiative created under former President Barack Obama, was frozen by the White House under former President Donald Trump in 2017.
Republican lawmakers and representatives of the business community had successfully pushed for the initiative to be scrapped, arguing it was too costly and burdensome for employers, and that sharing wage details raises confidentiality concerns.
However, in the years since the program's demise, employment law experts pointed out that there has been a rapid proliferation of pay transparency mandates at the state and local level that may make the EEOC's call for wage data far less of a hurdle for companies to manage. …
Hurdles on the Horizon
Not everyone agrees that the program would be less onerous the second time around. Some management-side attorneys were less convinced that any state-level policy action will aid compliance with a potential Component 2 reboot.
"Clearly there has been an increase in the number of states enacting pay transparency laws. That does not make EEOC's second swing at Component 2 less troublesome, however," said Dean R. Singewald II, an associate at Epstein Becker Green who advises businesses on equal employment opportunity compliance.
Singewald said the EEOC is seeking information that goes far beyond the most common pay transparency mandates, making compliance an added leap.
