So much for being the ‘workers’ party.’
The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday by a margin of 217-210, aimed at fighting pay discrimination and reducing the pay gap between men and women.
All 210 “no” votes were from Republicans. Only one Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, voted in favor of the bill.
The Paycheck Fairness Act, officially titled H.R. 7, would bolster the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits employers from paying unequal wages to men and women if both are performing the same work.
The new bill aims to protect employees from being penalized by employers for discussing their salaries. It would also require employers to demonstrate that any inequity in pay among employees is not gender-based, but related to the nature of the job performed.
The legislation would also establish a program to help train women on negotiation skills in the workplace and mandate that complainants filing gender-based wage discrimination claims be able to access the same resources as those provided by the Civil Rights Act for individuals filing race-based claims.
H.R. 7 would ban employers from asking salary history in job interviews or using salary history to determine employment eligibility for job applicants, and eliminate certain provisions in existing law that make it hard for plaintiffs to sue employers for pay inequity.
The bill seeks to address the stark employment gap that still exist decades after the Equal Pay Act was first passed. Census Bureau data from 2018 notes that women still make only 82 cents for every $1 that men earn. The gap is even more significant for Black and Latina women, with Black women making 62 cents for every $1 earned by white men and women identifying as Hispanic or Latino making 54 cents.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, as of 2019, American Indian and Alaska Native women made just 59.7 cents for every dollar paid to White non-Hispanic men. And a March report by the Center for American Progress showed that, among many Asian American Pacific Islander subgroups, women were vastly out-earned by white, non-Hispanic men.