At present there is no legal obligation to do anything more with your pay gap than publish it on your website, not necessarily accompanied by any form of explanation or other comment at all. Most employers caught by the current gender pay gap regulations (about 10,000 of them) have added some form of narrative, but … Continue Reading
So now you have published your gender pay gap statement and added the traditional narrative treading the thin line between acknowledgement of the gap and denial that it represents evidence of any unlawful discrimination. Well done so far, but if the UK Government has its way, that is only the beginning.… Continue Reading
On April 9, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an en banc ruling in Aileen Rizo v. Jim Yovino, case number 16-15372, holding that employers cannot justify a wage differential between men and women by relying on the employees’ respective wage histories alone. The plaintiff, a female consultant, learned that … Continue Reading
On October 12, 2017, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a salary privacy law prohibiting California employers from seeking or relying on salary history information, including compensation and benefits, about an applicant for employment. Agents of the employer, such as recruiters, are also prohibited from seeking for this information. Further, upon reasonable request, employers must provide … Continue Reading
Last month, the New York City Council approved legislation that bars employers from asking prospective hires to disclose their past salary. In passing the measure, New York City joins Massachusetts (see our post here), Puerto Rico and the city of Philadelphia in banning the question from job interviews and on applications. (Also see our post here … Continue Reading
As we previously reported to you, pay history has recently become a topic of much discussion among federal, state and municipal legislatures. Many jurisdictions around the country are considering laws that would quell employer inquiries into candidate pay history. The underlying purpose of these laws is to level out the historical pay gap between men … Continue Reading
Can employers ask a prospective employee what they have earned at prior jobs? For most employers, the answer is currently – yes. But, if you are among the large group of employers that do ask about past earnings, take heed. A growing number of states and municipalities and even the federal legislature are considering new … Continue Reading
So the “new look” 5th April, how was it for you….? Did you spend the day on “hold” as you scrabbled to use up your remaining ISA allowance? Were you locked in a room with your payroll provider getting all hot and bothered, or are you saving that for later in the month? Or are … Continue Reading
Courtesy of Acas, here are the top ten myths to be “busted” by the Government’s promised campaign to make the Gender Pay Gap Regulations look less over-engineered than they really are together with some italicised comments of our own. MYTH: We did an equal pay audit a while ago so we’re fine FACT: Equal Pay deals … Continue Reading
As we have mentioned in previous blog posts, having a gender pay gap does not mean in any way that an employer has necessarily failed to comply with its equal pay obligations under the Equality Act 2010. But this new obligation to publish pay information is likely to bring the issue of equal pay to … Continue Reading
We recently ran a webinar on the new gender pay gap reporting obligations coming into force in the UK in April. During and since the webinar we have been asked a number of questions about how the new reporting obligations will work. Here are some of these questions and our outline answers. Will group reporting … Continue Reading
The wait is over! Yesterday the UK Government issued the revised Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. Technically the Regulations are still in draft (as they have yet to be approved by Parliament), but the content should not change between now and when they are due to come into force on 6 … Continue Reading
So here they are, out yesterday, a strange parallel universe where months last 30.44 days and years 365.25, and where you don’t include pay for periods of leave except when you do. In past blogs here we have criticised Government Regulations and statutory Guidance as too vague, leaving employers unclear whether they are caught by … Continue Reading
At this stage we are still waiting for the final regulations on the new mandatory gender pay gap reporting obligations. This current series of blog posts is therefore based on what we know from the draft regulations and discussions around them. In terms of which employers will be caught by the new gender pay gap … Continue Reading
Sometimes people get confused between the gender pay gap and equal pay. They are not all the same thing. The gender pay gap measures the difference between men and women’s average pay. Equal pay, on the other hand, is the legal obligation under the Equality Act 2010 that requires employers to give men and women … Continue Reading
Over the next few weeks into the New Year we are going to publish a series of short blog posts on gender pay gap reporting in the UK, based on the questions we have been asked by clients and contacts in recent months. By the time we get to the end of our series, the … Continue Reading
For some time, the majority of married women working part-time in Japan have brought home annual pay of less than 1 million yen (around USD 9,150 at today’s exchange rates). This is largely the result of tax and compensation policies: At an annual income of 1.03 million yen, a part-time employee becomes subject to income tax, … Continue Reading
Today (10 November) is “Equal Pay Day” in the UK. It marks the day in the year when the average full-time working woman in the UK effectively stops earning compared to the average full-time working man because of the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap is the difference between men and women’s average earnings. … Continue Reading
According to data published today (26 October) by the Office for National Statistics in its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, the overall gender pay gap (taking into account both full-time and part-time employees) has fallen from 19.3% in 2015 to 18.1% in 2016. This is apparently the largest year-on-year drop since 2010. The gender … Continue Reading
On July 23, 2016, the Massachusetts legislature unanimously passed a comprehensive pay equality bill aimed at eradicating gender-based pay discrimination. The governor of Massachusetts signed the bill on August 1, 2016, but the law will not go into effect until July 1, 2018. The law requires that employers pay men and women equally when their … Continue Reading
The Obama Administration, together with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) kicked the year off with a bang on the equal pay frontier, announcing a proposed rule that will revise the EEOC’s longstanding Form EEO-1. The proposed rule was published on the Federal Register website on February 1, 2016 and a public comment period was … Continue Reading
Tuesday April 12 was Equal Pay Day, just one of the many days this year that placed equal pay in the news. We’ve already apprised you about California’s stringent amendment to the Fair Pay Act and the legal requirements it imposes. In case you missed it, Glassdoor just published a study [PDF] based on more … Continue Reading
So there they are, the draft Regulations proposed to implement gender pay gap reporting. No doubt there will be a storm of flak from all directions over these, from employers because compliance requires a considerable amount of work and from unions and employees because the Regulations have no legal teeth – there is no penalty … Continue Reading
A week ago, President Barack Obama announced further efforts by the White House and EEOC to combat gender pay equality issues. The momentum from last week’s announcement carried its way up the coast from the District of Columbia to the state legislature of New Jersey. Yesterday, New Jersey’s Senate Labor Committee approved Senate Bill 992 … Continue Reading
