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Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Marks One Year Anniversary; Has Salary Transparency Improved?

Glassdoor Team — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:11:08 +0000

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. Named after a woman who for years was paid significantly less than her male counterparts, the law helps to ensure that workers discriminated on the basis of gender have a fair chance to sue their employers.

However, in just one year, salary and the idea of “fair pay” has changed dramatically for most Americans. Those who were lucky enough to keep their position have had to deal with furlough days, pay cuts, changes in benefits and perks, and longer work days. The need for tangible information on salary is even greater today, as people struggle to fine the “new normal” in today’s economy. And people are looking for that information in droves — for example, as of January 2009, Glassdoor held close to 200,000 salary reports, and that number has nearly quadrupled today. We now have more than 730,000 employee and employer generated salary reports for positions in industries as varied as computer services, healthcare and education.

The need for more information on salary is gaining momentum worldwide, and the United Kingdom is now considering a law that would require companies to share their employee salaries, specifically to address the gender gap in pay. And President Obama has not dismissed the importance of the Ledbetter legislation. In his first State of the Union address on Wednesday he stated, “We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws — so that women get equal pay for an equal day’s work.”

Do you feel there is a greater need to know what the “new normal” is for salary? Do you share your salary? Let us know why.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Marks One Year Anniversary; Has Salary Transparency Improved? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Tips on How to Approach Suspected Pay Inequity

Rusty Rueff — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:41:51 +0000

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 same work at Goodyear as people who were hired later at higher wages yet for some reason her pay was never adjusted to current market. Unfortunately, she only discovered she was grossly underpaid as she neared retirement. The Lilly Ledbetter Act signed by President Obama offers people like Lilly remedy if they do discover the inequity but that is where the Act stops. There’s not much that addresses how to help that discovery – which is hard – especially in today’s market where having a job, regardless of the pay may be more important.

That said, what I love about being involved with Glassdoor is that they are trying to change the “in the dark” feeling that employees may feel on any number of workplace issues and bring more transparency to the workplace to ready people with more information to help them have needed conversations and help make the critical choices about their career. I have long believed more transparency in workplaces is better for everyone; employees – and employers. So, if you think you may have a pay-gap issue, here are some smart steps to approach the topic with your employer:

1. Do your homework to ensure that you have real and credible data first

Use Glassdoor and other sites to gauge your pay relative to other jobs at your company, and in the market, and print out examples for your discussion. Keep in mind, there may be things behind the numbers that are not presented in the raw data, but account for the disparity — that’s the important part about having a conversation.

2. Be sure that you aren’t coming across as advocating without good reason

Evaluate if the disparity in compensation is specific just to you or to a broader group. Identify what occurrences throughout your career may have influenced how and when you received pay raises. For example: Does your company conduct annual pay raises? How have you met, exceeded or fell short of the annual goals that were given to you? Have you taken time off work for an extended period of time? How does your experience compare to other individuals of the same gender who have currently or previously had your position?

If after careful thought, you still think you are still underpaid, remember that this could be something happening companywide and you may have an opportunity to help more people than just yourself. What you don’t want to do is force the win of a battle, to just lose the war. Think about it. You will know what is right to push for now and what to wait on for later.

3. Seek trusted advice

If you are female, seek out the most senior female influential executive (who is not your boss) and ask for her advice on how to broach the subject with your manager and/or HR. Take their advice. The same can be said if you are not a female. Having other senior influencers in the company who can help support the inequity, can only be a help to you.

4. Be patient

Recognize that almost all companies are dealing with numerous issues right now just trying to stay above water while also trying to figure out the implications of the Ledbetter Act. There is also the likelihood that the high volume of layoffs could be creating unintended pay gaps that will need to be remedied over time. I guarantee most employers are trying to keep people employed first and address pay inequity second. So, be patient and understand that this won’t change overnight. It doesn’t mean that you should forget the issue, but the more you can be seen as helping be a part of the solution versus a part of the problem, then the more listening time you will get.

I’d love to hear feedback from anyone who thinks this is an issue and how you’re addressing it.

Tips on How to Approach Suspected Pay Inequity is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Would More Salary Transparency Have Helped Lilly Ledbetter?

Glassdoor Team — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:28:35 +0000

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?

Ms. Ledbetter only found out about the pay discrepancy as her career at Goodyear was drawing to a close. There’s still no easy mechanism for people to find out if their pay is equitable. This gap is the fundamental reason we created Glassdoor.com. We want to open all the doors and windows and let the salary genies out of the bottle for everyone to see. Only when people have access to real information can they arm themselves with data to correct any inequity wrongs that might be present at a workplace.

If you haven’t taken that step yet, we encourage you to do so now. Fill out a salary survey for any job you’ve had in the past three years. Let’s all come together to make salary and compensation more transparent for everyone, everywhere.

Would More Salary Transparency Have Helped Lilly Ledbetter? is a post from: Glassdoor Blog