Obama targets pay gap

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed two executive measures intended to help close pay disparities between men and women.

Obama, standing in front of a platform of women at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, said his actions would make it easier for women to learn whether they had been cheated by employers.

The first order prohibits federal contractors from retaliating against employees for discussing their pay. The president also directed the Labor Department to draft rules requiring contractors to provide the government with pay data by sex and race.

Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that would take more significant steps.

“America deserves equal pay for equal work,” he said.

Noting that it was “Equal Pay Day,” he said that, on average, women who worked in 2013 had to work this far into 2014 to catch up to what men earned by the end of last year.

“That’s not fair,” Obama said. “That’s like adding another 6 miles to a marathon.”He added: “America should be a level playing field, a fair race for everybody.”

The president, as he has in the past, said it was “an embarrassment” that women on average earn 77 cents for every dollar men make, a number taken from the 2012 census. But he made no mention of a recent study that found that women in the White House make only 88 cents for every dollar men do.

Aides have said women earn the same salary as men of the same rank but that there are more women in lower-paying jobs - an explanation similar to that often given by private-sector employers.

Some critics have said both of those statistics are misleading because they are averages of all men and women in all jobs, rather than apples-to-apples comparisons of men and women in equivalent jobs with equivalent experience.

When measured by hourly earnings, the difference narrows to 86 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The larger gap is in part because women tend to work fewer hours than men and because annual figures include items omitted from hourly data, including tips and bonuses. An analysis of 2012 data by the Pew Research Center placed the discrepancy at 84 cents for women for every $1 made by men.

“We all support equal pay for equal work and know there’s a problem that must be addressed,” said Kirsten Kukowski, national press secretary for the Republican National Committee. “But many are questioning the Democrats’ motives as they continue their dishonesty about the issue and their own gender gap.”

The Senate is set to vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act today. That legislation, like Obama’s narrower executive order, would forbid companies from punishing workers who share salary information and would allow punitive and compensatory damages in lawsuits.

The legislation also would make it harder for companies to prove disparities in pay are not gender based and would make it easier to file class-action lawsuits.

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska said she would offer an amendment to narrow the measure, mostly by banning employer retaliation against workers who share salary information. She and several other Republican senators said they likely would vote to block debate on the overall bill today unless Democrats allow votes on GOP amendments.

Fischer said the Democratic bill would harm merit pay, allow unlimited damage claims in lawsuits against employers, and hinder people from accepting lower pay in exchange for more flexible work hours.

Meanwhile, nearly a dozen Democratic women senators took to the chamber’s floor Tuesday to support the legislation.

“We believe that women need a fair shot to get equal pay for equal work,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the measure’s sponsor. “And we want it in our law books and we want it in our checkbooks.”

A memo distributed by the Republican National Committee and two other party committees ahead of the vote noted that it already is illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender. It said Democrats “always seem to wait for an election year to push another empty promise.”

The committees released statistics showing pay gaps in the office staffs of several Democrats up for re-election this year, including Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Warner of Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

Carrie Lukas, managing director for the Independent Women’s Forum, which describes its goal as “increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty,” said the Senate measure would force employers “toward more rigid, one size-fits-all compensation packages.”

She said in a statement that it benefits lawyers who file class action lawsuits more than female workers.

Obama responded to the critics.

“Some commentators are out there saying that the pay gap doesn’t even exist,” he said. “They say it’s a myth. But it’s not a myth. It’s math.”

The president lambasted Republicans for opposing “any efforts to even the playing field for working families.” He added: “I don’t know why you would resist the idea that women should be paid the same as men and then deny that that’s not always happening out there. If Republicans in Congress want to prove me wrong, if they want to show that in fact they do care about women being paid the same as men, then show me. They can start tomorrow.”

Neither of the actions Obama took Tuesday would affect the broad U.S. workforce. But the White House staged a ceremony with the sort of profile usually reserved for a major bill signing.

Aides arranged for Obama to be introduced by Lilly Ledbetter, who has become a symbol of the pay gap issue since the Supreme Court ruled that her discrimination case had been filed after the expiration of a statute of limitations. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which provides employees more time to file such lawsuits, was the first legislation Obama signed into law when he took office in 2009.

Ledbetter said the executive order signed by Obama on Tuesday would have made a difference in her case.

“I didn’t know I was being paid unfairly, and I had no way to find out,” she said. “I was told in no uncertain terms that Goodyear, then and still a government contractor, fired employees who shared their salary information. It was against company policy.”

Obama said Ledbetter’s case belied the explanations often given for pay differentials.

“You’ll hear all sorts of excuses: ‘Oh, well they’re childbearing and they’re choosing to do this and they’re this and they’re that and they’re the other,’” he said.

“She was doing the same job, probably doing better. Same job. Working just as hard, probably putting in more hours,” Obama said. “But she was getting systematically paid less.”

While Obama has championed equal pay since taking office, he has come under pressure from some women’s groups in the past to boost the role of women in the White House and in his cabinet. Women make up about 53 percent of the electorate and gave Obama a decisive majority of their votes.

The White House staff roughly reflects the nation’s gender balance, with women in about half of almost 500 jobs with salaries ranging from $41,000 a year for staff assistance to $172,200 for senior advisers and assistants to the president, a group that includes senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and press secretary Jay Carney.

Of the 22 White House employees listed in a 2013 annual report to Congress as making the top salary, 10 are women. Of the 55 at the lowest end of the pay scale, 24 are women.

A recent review of staff salaries at the White House found the president’s female aides were paid 88 cents for every dollar paid to men.

The analysis of the salary report done in February by University of Michigan economics professor Mark Perry for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington policy research organization, concluded the median salary in the White House was $65,000 for women and $73,729 for men.

Asked Monday about the American Enterprise Institute figures, Carney said women are well represented in the top ranks of the administration and that the median figure is better than the national average.

“And when it comes to the bottom line that women who do the same work as men have to be paid the same, there is no question that that is happening here at the White House at every level,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Baker of The New York Times; by Phil Mattingly, Kathleen Hunter and Angela Greiling Keane of Bloomberg News; and by Alam Fram and Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press.