Sarah Gamard/Manship School News Service
Louisiana ranks second in the nation for greatest wage gap between men and women, 32 cents less per dollar of wages than men. Wyoming women make 36 cents less.
The gap increases even further for women of color.
Of Louisiana women who hold full-time, year-round jobs, black women earn 52 cents less, Latinas 49 cents less and Asian women 42 cents under every dollar earned by white males, the National Partnership for Women and Families reported this week.
Yet, this is an improvement over last year when Louisiana women earned 35 cents less per dollar.
The state has improved from its consistent past ranking of dead last. It didn’t help that last June the Louisiana House Labor Committee killed a bill requiring private businesses to guarantee equal pay for male and female employees after the bill had cleared the Senate for the first time in legislative history on a 28-10 vote.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, has pre-filed a new bill for the 2017 legislative session that convenes Monday. His Senate Bill 2 starts out with a couple of revisions from his original bill last year.
Morrell points to a “no-harm-no-foul” provision where, if an employer self-corrects an employee’s pay gap after the employee seeks to rectify it, the employee cannot sue.
Another: If the employer does not self-rectify and the employee does sue for pay discrimination, the limit on back pay would be three years. Morrell said that most states with equal pay legislation give up to nine years of back pay. He said lawmakers compromised on three years for Louisiana on the Senate floor last year.
Like last year, the bill also emphasizes that equal pay be applicable to private employers and men -- not just women.
Morrell is not the only lawmaker seeking pay legislation. Rep. Helena Moreno, D-New Orleans, pre-filed House Bill 222 for this session, which would prohibit employers from taking actions against employees for discussing wage information.
“(Moreno’s) bill is very different,” Morrell said. “The two (bills) complement each other, but neither is contingent on the other.”
Morrell said Louisiana does not have a sufficient compilation of data regarding pay equity because employees in the state can be fired for discussing pay with one another.
A survey by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the Rockefeller Institute found 51 percent of women and 47 percent of men report that discussing wage information is either discouraged by their employer or could lead to disciplinary action.
Eliminating pay secrecy, Morrell said, would help the market “self-correct” and help collect data in Louisiana. “One way to help women and men know whether they are being compensated equally is pay transparency,”