Paycheck Fairness Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. TRAHAN. Madam Chair, before addressing the pending amendment, I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for his leadership and also express my profound appreciation for my friend from Connecticut. She has been a tireless champion over the years for equal pay on behalf of those who have been discriminated against unfairly.

Madam Chair, I imagine that most of us agree that unfair pay discrimination needs to be stopped. Unfortunately, despite the progress we have made in offering greater opportunities to more and more Americans, pay discrimination persists, and, at times, it occurs in stealth ways that cannot be easily detected. That, in fact, is a key reason why I oppose this amendment.

Keeping this bill intact is necessary to prevent the kind of unfair discrimination that occurs when one employee is compensated less than another despite doing the same job just as well for just as long and with the same credentials.

I worked in the private sector for 13 years before coming to Congress. I know firsthand that unfair pay disparities still occur.

Across industries, I worked with employers to confront this inequality, to bring more women to the decisionmaking table and create work environments where people of any sex, gender, race, or ethnicity were truly empowered.

Pay discrimination derails a workplace. It holds back talent and undermines trust, a toxic mix for any business.

A key component of the Paycheck Fairness Act requires that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission collect wage data, disaggregated by sex, race, and national origin. This provision is particularly necessary to respond to the administration's attempt to block the EEOC from collecting data.

Earlier this month, the National Women's Law Center won an important case to reinstate the EEOC's ability to collect this data. Nevertheless, attacks on collecting data of this type continue. We should not make it easier to hide pay discrimination.

This provision is necessary to ensure that equal work does, in fact, lead to equal pay. It will reveal trends in hiring, compensation, and advancement, and it will expose sex-segregated jobs, and unequal salaries, benefits, or bonuses.

This provision is a critical component of the bill, and I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment and keep the bill intact.

Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

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Mrs. TRAHAN. Madam Chair, reporting this data allows the EEOC to see which employers have racial or gender pay gaps that differ significantly from the pay patterns of other employers in their industry and region.

To be clear, this pay data will not conclusively establish that any employer is violating the law, and it isn't intended to. What it will do is aggregate millions of data points to establish gender and racial pay patterns within job categories, industries, and localities, allowing identification of firms that significantly depart from those benchmarks that may warrant further analysis.

Simply put, we cannot end unfair pay discrimination if we don't have the data.

I join my colleague from North Carolina in celebrating a record number of women entering the workforce, but let's compensate them fairly for their work, and let's use data to inform our decisions.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment and support the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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