Schatz, Democrats reintroduce Paycheck Fairness Act on Equal Pay Day

US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) and the Senate Democratic caucus have reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, aiming to address wage discrimination and close the gender pay gap. Announced on Equal Pay Day, the legislation seeks to strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by increasing transparency, protecting employees who discuss wages and holding employers accountable for pay disparities.

“Women deserve the same pay and rights as men in the workplace – full stop,” Schatz said in a statement on Tuesday. “Our bill is a common-sense step to fight wage discrimination that is costing women and families thousands of their hard-earned dollars every year.”

More than 50 years since the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the gender wage gap still persists. In Hawai‘i, women working full-time earned an estimated 82 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2023, down from 86 cents between 2015 and 2022. Nationally, the gap widened for the first time in 20 years last year, with women earning 75 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to a $14,170 annual pay difference. Collectively, US women lost $1.7 trillion in earnings in 2023.

The Paycheck Fairness Act proposes several changes, including:

• Require employers to prove that pay disparities exist for legitimate, job-related reasons. In doing so, it ensures that employers who try to justify paying a man more than a woman for the same job must show the disparity is not sex-based, but job-related and necessary.
• Ban retaliation against workers who discuss their wages.
• Remove obstacles in the Equal Pay Act to facilitate participation in class action lawsuits that challenge systemic pay discrimination, by allowing workers to opt-out, rather than requiring them to opt-in.
• Improve the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s and Department of Labor’s tools for enforcing the Equal Pay Act. To help these enforcement agencies better uncover and remedy wage discrimination, the bill will require the collection of compensation data from certain employers, including federal contractors.
• Provide assistance to all businesses to help them with their equal pay practices, recognize excellence in pay practices by businesses, and empower women and girls by creating a negotiation skills training program.
• Prohibit employers from relying on and seeking the salary history of prospective employees.

The bill, which has been introduced multiple times in the past, faces an uphill battle in Congress, where previous versions have failed to advance. The full text of the Paycheck Fairness Act is available here.