Posts by Nicholas Starkman
Under COVID-19, Progress Toward Gender Equality in the Workplace is at Risk
New data suggest that the economic downturn associated with COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women. A pair of articles in the Economist and Bloomberg News discuss how this slowdown is different from others in its gendered impact, particularly along the dimensions of 1) job loss and 2) distribution of household and childrearing responsibilities. Together, they paint…
Read MoreThe Difficulty in Identifying Comparators for Equal Pay Claims
Pay equity litigation is proceeding apace despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and claimants are raising critical issues pertaining to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (“EPA”). The EPA requires that an employee claiming gender-based wage discrimination first demonstrate that employees of the opposite sex were paid different wages for substantially equal work. To show that the…
Read MoreLocalizing Compensation and Pay Equity Audits
Facebook recently announced that employees who expect to work from home for the long term will receive localized pay adjustments based on where they choose to live, according to reporting from USA Today. TechCrunch added these additional details from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “We’ll localize everybody’s comp on January 1,” Zuckerberg said. “They can do…
Read MoreA Pay Equity Strategy Should Start at Home: Recommendations for Sharing Equal Work
It has been over thirty years since the sociologist Arlie Hochschild wrote her landmark work, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. In The Second Shift Hochschild interviewed 50 different couples as they struggled to adapt to the new reality of more women and mothers entering the workforce in the 1980’s. She…
Read MoreDespite Dismissal at Court, USWNT Continues Pay Equity Claim
It was a stunning defeat for a team that has seemed at times invincible—but it was not on the soccer pitch. On Friday May 1, 2020, a federal district court judge dismissed the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s (USWNT) claim of unequal pay against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). Undaunted, the USWNT has appealed…
Read MoreEqual Pay Audits Should Include Consideration of Equity-Based Pay
Too often, when business executives consider pay equity, they think about two factors: base compensation (e.g., salary) and rewards-based compensation (e.g., bonuses). A recent study entitled “The Road to Inequity is Paved with Good Intentions: Examining the Gender Pay Gap in Equity Awards” by Felice B. Klein, et al. (Academy of Management, Annual Meeting Proceedings),…
Read MoreDespite COVID-19, Pay Equity Continues to be a Priority
Undeniably, it is a very sensitive time for employers across the U.S. dealing with the economic implications ofCOVID-19.However, a recent order from the Central District Court of California serves as a reminder that employers should continue to focus their efforts on pay equity compliance. In May of 2019, Yunghui Chen, a former auditor for the…
Read MoreNew Jersey State Agency Encourages Pay Equity Audits
Last month, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights released its guidance on enforcement of the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act (the “Allen Act”). The Allen Act represents a high watermark for state equal pay legislation. It contains numerous provisions designed to promote pay equity, including expanded remedies for victims of pay discrimination, limiting…
Read MorePay Equity is Still a Top Concern for OFCCP Despite Pandemic
While U.S. companies continue to grapple with issues posed by the Covid-19 pandemic,pay equity issues should not be put on the backburner. On March 16, 2020, the United States Department of Labor announced the resolution of a pay equity claim brought by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) against Cisco Systems, Inc. The…
Read MoreMore Governments are Encouraging Pay Equity Through Transparency
Effective April 2017, the United Kingdom set a global example on the issue of pay equity by requiring organizations to publish 12-month snapshots online accounting for their gender pay gaps. The pay data reports are publicly accessible online. One critical idea underlying the pay data reporting obligations in the UK is that transparency serves to…
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