Can we discuss the differences between the two versions? There's been a whole lot of nothing in this thread...
Some companies include gag orders in their contracts prohibiting employees from revealing/discussing their salaries. The argument goes that some of the "pay gap" between women and men employees results from these clauses since women employees dont get to see what their men coworkers are making, and resultingly dont realize they are being underpaid for the same work. Banning these types of gag orders is a policy I have heard some democrats discuss in campaign speeches. Both versions of the bill repeal these gag orders.
The main difference comes down to bloat and whether or not this bill should have a budgetary impact. The Senate bill (which is unfortunately where most of this bills language also comes from) was just a copy/pasted version of a real life bill and so it included a bunch of junk attached to it which has been removed in the above version. The junk is either useless or totally unrelated and unnecessary. Spoiler alert, only $15 Million would be appropriated to fund the entirety of this bill:
Sec 4 of the Senate bill would create a program to spend money educating corporations "on matters involving discrimination in the payment of wages." That is a very vague criterion and would have very little impact even if it had the full $15 Million budgeted, but remember that money is split between this and the below stuff.
Section 5 of the Senate bill is the segregation stuff I keep pointing out. It would spend federal money on grants for "negotiation skills training programs for girls and women." With such little money it is probable that most women will never get to sit through what basically sounds like a glorified powerpoint presentation on being assertive. And you know, its also segregation. At this funding level a few well-connected activists would get paid to read powerpoints to a group, maybe even do a roleplaying game for a minute or 2, and that would be it without providing any real tangible benefit or change in the "pay gap".
Section 6 of the Senate Bill is pretty much exactly Section 4 except it lists more groups that can be eligible for the useless grants and also calls for spending money on "recognizing and promoting the achievements of employers, labor organizations, and professional associations that have worked to eliminate the pay disparities" I.E. an awards program for the NEA and other unions, as well as "convening a national summit" which is again really laughable considering how little money is appropriated. Remember only $15 Million to convene a super important and effective National Summit, a labor union awards program, 2 grant programs for telling corporations not to discriminate in pay, and 1 grant program for training women and only women in salary negotiation, plus the stuff below.
Section 7 of the Senate Bill would create the "National Award for Pay Equity in the Workplace" which would be an awards program for " a corporations ... partnerships ... professional associations ... [and TA DA] labor organizations." So both Section 6 and Section 7 of this bill create redundant awards programs for labor unions. Why create such an awards program? According to the Senate bill "to encourage proactive efforts to comply with [the law]". The Senate bill is literally spending money and creating another permanent appendage of the bureaucracy to give awards to corporations and labor unions for obeying the law.
Section 8 of the Senate Bill imposes a record keeping requirement on businesses requiring them to make a list divided by race (for some unexplained reason) and sex of any person the business ever hires, promotes or fires. This isnt just burdensome and intrusive, it doesn't really prove anything about actual pay discrimination. If a company fires 5 male and 1 female employee does that show that the company isnt discriminating? The race topic wasnt brought up a single time by Pericles so Im not sure why he kept that in a bill about the gap between the unweighted average of male and female incomes.
Section 9 of the Senate Bill is basically just a policy statement that the super important bureaucrat that is the "Commissioner of Labor Statistics shall continue to collect data on women workers", something it currently already does, and also requests that half of all non-construction employers be responsible for even more federal recordkeeping by completing a survey with no current questions and which may be off no benefit to anyone, since there are no questions, and also tries to sneak through changes to the Federal Rules of Evidence that basically let in some wage discrimination cases even if there is no direct or statistical evidence.
Section 10 of the Senate Bill imposes a $5,000 fine on any employers who "rely on the wage history of a prospective employee in determining the wages for such prospective employee." If the goal of this bill is fair bargaining rights, it is certainly not fair for only 1 side to be armed with knowledge of what the other side if willing to offer. Eliminating the gag orders (which both the Senate Bill and the above House Bill do) allows employees to know what the employer is willing to offer. This aides them in salary negotiation. Section 10 of the Senate Bill however then removes that same knowledge from the employer (I.E. what the employee is willing to work for). Considering this bill literally has the word "fairness" in its name, how is it in anyway fair to extend a tactic unfairly denied to one side while simultaneously unfairly denying the same tactic to the other side?
Section 11 of the Senate Bill is the stupid stealth tax increase. The House bill eliminates unfair gag orders in contracts and costs nothing. The Senate bill was hastily copy/pasted and so stuff that really doesnt apply in Atlasia got left in, unnecessarily bringing paygo into the mix. So Section 11 appropriates a negligible amount of money to grossly underfund useless programs that would likely have not been effective at doing anything to remedy a "paygap" and therefore requires funding of its own. And so buried at the bottom of an unnecessarily long, 2 post copy/pasted bill is a tax increase. Putting aside the fact that in other circumstances I might be amenable to increasing the estate tax, this is a really dumb way to do it. In case anyone missed it, Pericles "wrote" a missing alzheimers alert bill I never saw until I was doing the audit as GM and it had already passed. The purpose of the bill was to fund a $6 Million grant program for missing alzheimers patients. Pericles tacked on an estate tax increase of $23 Billion. So like 99.97% of that tax increase had nothing to do with the cost of the bill. While the discrepancy wont be AS huge in the Senate bill, it cheapens the meaning of this bill to hide a large tax increase in it when its unnecessary. Again, Im not saying an estate tax increase might not be necessary in the future (even if it was just increased by a third a few months ago by Pericles), but that should be a separate debate.
In conclusion, a Paycheck Fairness Act that prohibits employer contracts with gag orders on sharing salary information and doesn't impact that budget would garner broad, bipartisan support and would not purposefully create disharmony. Instead, the Senate Bill rejects that premise without ever addressing any of the above points despite repeated requests to the supposed supporters who I can only imagine must be too embarrassed to defend the bad ideas. No evidence was ever offered as to how redundant, useless, underfunded grant programs, segregated classes, awards for unions and corporations and unions that obey the law, a work conference, requiring businesses to keep separate lists of black and white employees, a survey without questions that will never be simulated in-game, a stimulus for trial lawyers, or unfair fines on employers who do homework will realistically diminish the "paygap" between men and women. Several persons asked Pericles what evidence he had that these useful programs would actually do what he claimed they'd do. His evidence was to state that "The bill works best when taken as a full package." ... "the different components of the bill are important." ... "The steps in this bill are appropriate, and a gutted bill would be less effective." Those comments were the closest he even came to acknowledging the specific policies of concern. It appears that he didnt even know they were in there and didnt care to research. That they were in there was enough that they SHOULD be in there without any need for explanation or justification. Instead of debate on the specific sections identified we got 2 rushed show votes where no one in support of the unamended Senate Bill was willing to say a single thing in support of those polices at issue.
This above House Bill is a good bill that everyone can support and it contains only the parts that people are actually willing to expressly defend. If you are too scared to defend your crappy bill, it probably shouldnt pass. But that is exactly what is happening with the Senate Bill. I'd even be only somewhat annoyed about this if the Senate Bill passed but at least the parts I think are stupid and pointless had someone try and explain why those stupid pointless parts are needed. Instead we just get treated to rushed votes along party lines without any discussion so as not to appear stupid in advocating for stupid policies.
