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One year ago today, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law – the first piece of legislation he signed since taking office. However, in just one year, salary and the idea of “fair pay” has changed dramatically for most Americans.
Do you feel there is a greater need to know what the “new normal” is for salary? Do you share your salary?
Glassdoor’s recent analysis on the gender pay gap in the engineering sector raises important questions that should be answered by both employers and employees. As Glassdoor pointed out, the data doesn’t give a tremendous amount of insight into elements that may be behind the numbers – like someone’s performance reviews or special skills – but it does provide helpful inputs to gather information and foster more meaningful conversations between talent/employees and employers.
(Since the equal pay act was passed, this is specifically important to women) If you are in the engineering field or suspect you may be paid less than your peers, you have every right to ask the “why” questions and make an inquiry of your supervisor/manager. As someone who has sat on the employer side for many years, I can tell you that many things like performance ratings, practical experience or skill set, seniority and even something like location, will often affect overall compensation packages. And most of these are invisible to anyone other than the manager, HR and the specific employee. The challenge is to wade through what’s performance, skill-related or retention-based inequities versus the things outside of an employee’s control. For example, Lilly Ledbetter was doing the ...
Last week, the first piece of legislation President Obama signed into law was the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Ms. Ledbetter had filed suit against Goodyear, alleging her Goodyear Salary was less than her male counterparts, many of whom she had trained during her nearly 20-year tenure and had far less seniority.
Lilly Ledbetter/AP
Ms. Ledbetter had won a pay discrimination suit but that was later thrown out by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, citing she should have filed suit 180 days after she was first paid less than her male counterparts. The new law expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, and relaxed the statute of limitations, restarting the six-month clock every time the worker receives a paycheck. Some say the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act isn’t enough. Some say it could make suits worse.
We think this is an important move to address unjustified pay inequality, but we’re still left with the burning question, How do people really know if they are fairly paid or underpaid for the work they do?
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