Barack Obama recently passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which broadens employees’ rights vis-a-vis suing for pay discrimination. MartketWatch reports:
The Ledbetter law widens the time frame during which employees can claim pay discrimination. The law amends other civil rights legislation to clarify that each new paycheck is a chance to file discrimination charges against employers — a stance that courts had commonly taken prior to a controversial 2007 Supreme Court decision that narrowed the window.
The Supreme Court had found that Lilly Ledbetter, who retired in 1998 and worked for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for almost two decades before an anonymous tipster informed her she was paid less than male co-workers, had waited too long to file a charge because she did not complain within 180 days of the original discriminatory pay decision. In some states the window is 300 days.
Employers that aren’t already keeping good records on pay for workers may want to start, said Neal Mollen, a partner in the employment department at law firm Paul Hastings.
“We are advising our clients that they need to look at record-retention policies, look at the kinds of records they currently have, and how they can revise them to be more descriptive for the future,” said Mollen, who represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the Ledbetter case. “I think employers going forward are going to want to make sure that when they are making pay decisions, the decisions and rationale are reflected someplace in a written document that will survive the manager.”
Ledbetter is a pain for employers, and a boon for lawyers. But the move is more symbolic than industry-changing. A few people with access to a lawyer and a previously closeted vendetta may sue, certainly. But the MarketWatch article points out that you need money to sue someone, and I agree with that. Who has the juice to sue an employer right now?
In better times, when there’s money to go around, Ledbetter might prop up a cottage industry of compliance experts and specialty lawyers. For business owners with a salaried employee base, however, it will always remain a headache. It won’t push business owners away from salarying, but could be part of a bigger equation to nix a non-contract workforce.
That, I think, is the scariest possible outcome of the bill.
