Human Resource Consulting and Outsourcing Services
How Do You Feel About The Government Ruling On Our Wages?
HR professionals who manage compensation use their professional judgment to consider a number of legitimate factors in creating fair and equitable compensation systems. These include experience, education, profitability, merit, productivity, prior salary history and location. The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) would allow the Federal government to second-guess employer pay practices in a few concerning ways…
- Restrict employer flexibility in pay decisions – The PFA would effectively prohibit employers from using many legitimate factors to compensate their employees, including professional experience, education, training, employer need, local labor market rates, hazard pay, shift differentials and the profitability of the organization. The PFA would permit employers to base pay decisions only on production, merit and seniority.
- Require collection of employer wage data – The PFA would authorize the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Labor to collect compensation data from compensation managers.
- Reduce employee privacy – The PFA would effectively encourage employees to discuss or publicize their co-workers’ wages by preventing employer retaliation against an individual who publicly discloses the wages of other employees.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) introduced S. 3220, the Paycheck Fairness Act, on May 22, 2012. The Senate plans to vote on S. 3220 during the week of June 4-8.
While I am strongly committed to preventing and resolving any form of workplace discrimination, including pay disparities between women and men, I believe wages should be determined by the market, type of position, education of the employee and the employer needs, not by the government. The Paycheck Fairness Act would threaten the tools that HR professionals use to reward and retain their employees. The bill would also have a negative impact on employee privacy by encouraging employees to publicize their colleagues’ wages.
We encourage you to share your thoughts with your local representatives prior to June 4th, 2012.
UPDATE: The Senate voted down this bill on June 5th.
Terrible idea. This is supposed to be a free country, for better or for worse. In a free market, I think every employer should have the freedom to hire whoever they want.
If an employer passes on a qualified employee who is great at their job for an employee who is not as good, due to discrimination, that person should abruptly leave and find another employer. The employee needs to find a non discriminant employer who can identify their talents. I believe the employer who does not discriminate will enjoy greater success because they are not limiting themselves to certain individuals.
.
Is that easy to do? No it’s not, but the world will never be easy and it will never be fair…..so we all need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, drop the woe is me attitude and keep the government from taking away any more freedoms, because we will all suffer in the long run.
How much better would a Ritz be than a Motel 6 if neither could hire based on professional experience, education, training, employer need, local labor market rates, hazard pay, shift differentials and the profitability of the organization?
If our government knew how to run a business, would the most powerful country in the world be trillions of dollars in debt? No. We would be making money hand over fist.