Had Repeatedly Urged the President to Take Both Actions
Available To Speak With Members of the Press Today
WASHINGTON, DC—Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) today applauded the announcement President Obama will sign two executive actions on equal pay. DeLauro has repeatedly urged the President to take both actions: prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against employees who choose to discuss their compensation, and collecting information from federal contractors on pay broken down by sex and race.
“Tuesday we mark Equal Pay Day, the day when an average woman’s earnings finally catch up to what her male colleagues made the prior year. A key part of ending what President Kennedy called the ‘serious and endemic’ problem of unequal wages is having the knowledge that you are being paid less in the first place. Just ask Lilly Ledbetter, who only found out she was being paid less because of an anonymous note. In order to detect and combat pay discrimination, employees must be able to share salary information with their coworkers without fear of punishment. I constantly hear from women across the country that unequal pay continues to happen and is hard to uncover.
“This is not just about women; it is about ensuring families, who are more reliant on women’s wages than ever, are not being shortchanged. Collecting data is a necessary step if we are to identify and end patterns of pay disparity. I am pleased the Labor Department will be taking steps to finally deal with this scourge head-on. And I could not applaud more strongly the President’s Executive Order banning retaliation among federal contractors. Now Congress needs to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act so we can ensure women succeed and America succeeds.”
To mark the fifth anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this past January, DeLauro led a letter signed by 56 Democratic congresswomen asking the President to issue the Executive Order he will be signing Tuesday. DeLauro also sought to include amendments to several funding bills last May and June prohibiting contractors with the departments of Defense and Homeland Security from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay. Also last year, DeLauro and Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) sent a letter to the President, asking him to ban federal contractors from employing pay secrecy practices. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which DeLauro has introduced every congress since 1997, would end the practice at all businesses. If you are a member of the media who would like to speak with DeLauro on this issue, please respond to this email.
