By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
BLR founder and CEO Bob Brady reports on responses to his recent survey on the impact of the new Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The surprising majority view? “I’m OK– you’re a mess.”
In late January, as one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 into law, giving victims of pay discrimination some potent new weapons.
In an attempt to assess the probable impact, we asked our readers to tell us what they and their companies are doing to respond. The readers who participated in the survey gave us two, contradictory answers. First, they said the new law won’t have much effect on their own workplaces.
But … it will affect other employers, the same managers said—a kind of “I’m not cheating, but everyone else is” response.
In the poll, which accompanied a January 30, 2009, E-pinion, only 11% of the respondents said that the new law would have significant impact on their workplaces. However, 69% predicted that “employers in general” would suffer significant impact. The difference between how they view their own liabilities versus the liabilities of others is hard to understand.
Statute of Limitations
The Ledbetter law effectively eliminates the statute of limitations from equal pay cases. It decrees that if a pay disparity is the result of discrimination, a new cause of action occurs every time a paycheck is issued, in effect keeping the case open as long as employment continues. In Ledbetter’s case, she claimed that she had been discriminated against decades earlier. Her suit was thrown out because of the statute of limitations, but Congress and the president have now overruled the U.S. Supreme Court.
The “I’m OK– you’re a mess” response was true pretty much across the board. There were only minor differences among the various demographic groups responding to the survey. The tables below show results by size of employer. A total of 121 HR Daily Advisor readers participated in the survey.
Kidding Ourselves?
The results of the poll make you wonder. Are HR managers kidding themselves about their own liabilities? Or are they wrong about their colleagues? Or are our readers particularly virtuous, comprising employers with particularly stellar employment policies? (We certainly hope so!)
My bet is that managers are reasonably accurate when it comes to assessing their own situations. They know where the bodies are buried, and they have a good sense of how litigious employees are likely to be. They are probably not quite as accurate when it comes to judging others; but I do think (at least I hope!) that there is good reason to believe that employers with problems are not inclined to read a publication like the HR Daily Advisor, which is dedicated to helping HR managers comply with the law.
A Few Big Cases?
But—and this is a big “but”—the “fat tail” could sweep around to slap a few employers very severely. It may be that there won’t necessarily be a lot of lawsuits, but there will be a few big ones that cost a few employers a lot.
How Employers Will Respond
How do employers plan to respond to the Lilly Ledbetter law? If the responses to the survey are to be believed, they don’t plan to do much. Only 3% said they expect to make salary adjustments, 19% said they are researching the issue, and 20% said they will be doing job evaluations.
As always, I’d be glad to hear your comments. E-mail me at rbrady@blr.com.
