Wednesday, February 02, 2000
Equity in pay bill has enemies
Some lawmakers, businesses object
BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FRANKFORT — Some Northern Kentucky lawmakers have joined the region's leading business group in fighting legislation designed to protect women against gender-based wage discrimination.
The Pay Equity Act sponsored by Rep. Joni Jenkins, D-Shively, would allow women to win back pay and damages in court if they could show they were being paid less than men for jobs that require the same skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
If passed, the bill would be the strongest of its kind in the nation, according to the legislation's sponsors.
Last week, the House Labor and Industry Committee advanced the bill 11-2. It now heads to the House floor, where changes are expected.
The Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is lobbying against the bill. The Fort Mitchell business group with nearly 2,000 members claims that te measure, House Bill 12, is redundant because of federal and state anti-discrimination laws.
“Employers are already prohibited from paying lower wages based on sex, race or any other protected status and are
already required to maintain most, if not all, of the records that this act would require employers to maintain,” said David Peck, an attorney with the Cincinnati law firm of Taft, Stettinius and Hollister and the chairman of the chamber's Labor and Employment Law Committee.
Steve Stevens, the chamber's lead lobbyist, warned that the bill would “open the door” for lawsuits between employers and employees.
“Rather than allowing employers to figure out if an employee is being fairly compensated, this bill basically allows a judge to do that,” Mr. Stevens said. “We think that's bad policy and is certainly threatening to employers who are already paying very high wages” in Northern Kentucky.
Under existing laws, some major employers have paid high settlements to end gender discrimination lawsuits. In recent years, Home Depot, the hardware superstore, paid $87.5 million to 22,000 female employees; Publix Supermarkets Inc. in Florida paid $81.5 million; and Ingles Markets Inc., a grocery chain in North Carolina, paid $14 million in cash, coupons and benefits to women who complained the store kept them in low-paying, dead-end jobs.
Rep. Paul Marcotte, R-Union, called the Kentucky legislation “a lawyers' bill” and said he will vote against it.
Rep. Tom Kerr, D-Taylor Mill, is also opposed to the bill.
House Republicans have said they will offer amendments to afford more protection to employers and to exempt small businesses from the legislation. As it stands now, the bill would apply to any business with two or more employees.
But Rep. Eleanor Jordan, D-Louisville, one of the bill's co-sponsors, said excluding small businesses would defeat the purpose.
“It's the small employers where a lot of these discriminatory practices are happening,” Ms. Jordan said.
During last week's committee hearing on the bill, University of Kentucky law professor Carolyn Bratt, a specialist in sex discrimination law, said studies conducted in the state have found that women are paid 72 cents for every $1 paid to men. The national average disparity is 74 cents for every $1 paid to men.
“Certain jobs pay less simply because they are performed by women,” Ms. Bratt testified.
“Women and people of color are not receiving their just desserts when they work as hard as their white male counterparts and get paid less.”
Ms. Bratt also said that while the state's anti-discrimination law prohibits unequal pay for the same job, it does not apply to different jobs with equivalent skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Another issue with the bill's opponents is its requirement that employers submit annual reports of what employees are paid and how their wage is calculated. That information must be shared with the employee and then sent to the state, without the employee's name, so the data can be tracked. Officials could then help determine if the law is being broken.
Mr. Peck warned, “The duplicity of this law, the additional administrative burdens it creates ... and its provision of punitive damages may all serve to discourage employers from locating in Kentucky and will certainly create additional litigation for those that do.”
The Louisville Courier-Journal contributed to this report.
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