Paycheck Fairness Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support my amendment to H.R. 7.

I was privileged to serve on the Science Committee and study physics as an undergraduate, and I have always been impressed with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It says you can't measure something without changing it.

As a longtime businessman, we always wanted to be driven by data because you can't manage what you don't measure.

Receiving equal pay should not have to depend on an anonymous note writer letting you know that you are being underpaid. Guaranteeing that women and men receive equal pay for equal work is a principle rooted in our Nation's commitment to equality and fairness.

My amendment would require employers to report pay data by race, national origin, and gender to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and for that data to be shared with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

It would lengthen the timeframe for inception of the pay data collection from 18 to 24 months, providing the EEOC with more time to develop and execute an effective pay data collection.

I believe it is plausible, Madam Speaker, to say that more than 90 percent of paychecks are prepared by software, either internal or external. I remember preparing paychecks by hand, but it is a very small business that does that anymore. That software will evolve overnight, probably through the course of this debate, and the burden is likely to be small.

The amendment also permits, but doesn't require, the use of pay bands or hours-worked data and provides the EEOC with flexibility in what type of compensation data to use. Importantly, it also gives the EEOC the discretion to collect additional employment-related data but also to consider employer burden, data format, and confidentiality.

Pay data reporting by employers promises to shine light on race and gender pay disparities, increase the likelihood of employer self- analysis and self-correction, and identify the areas of concern for further investigation by enforcement agencies.

Reporting this data will also allow the EEOC to see which employers have racial or gender pay gaps that differ significantly from the pay patterns from other employers in their industry and region.

I can also say, after almost 50 years of adapting to Federal regulations, almost every business can find a way to profit from it.

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