Comp News – The US Senate failed to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act in a 49-50 vote.

The bill would have needed 60 votes to pass the Republican-led filibuster. The legislation was backed by Democrats but failed to garner a single GOP sponsor in the Senate.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would require employers to demonstrate that any gap in pay between a man and a woman was due to job performance rather than gender.

 

It would also bar employers from retaliating against workers for sharing salary information and from inquiring into or taking into consideration an employee’s wage history. Another provision would authorize the creation of a grant program that would train women on salary negotiations and require public education regarding wage discrimination, among other things.

The bill aimed to address the disparity between women’s annual earnings and those of their male counterparts.

Women’s annual earnings were 82 percent of their male counterparts’ in 2020, according to the Labor Department. That gap widens dramatically by race: Black and Latina women holding a bachelor’s degree take home 65 percent of what white men with the same level of education do.

The pandemic has exacerbated the disparity, with women disproportionately impacted by layoffs, school closures and a child care shortage. As recently as February, women’s labor force participation rate was 56 percent — the same as it was in 1987, according to the Labor Department.

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