On March 23, 2021, Illinois amended the state’s Equal Pay Act of 2003 to include additional reporting requirements targeted at identifying gender and racial pay disparities.
Under the newly enacted Section 11 of the Equal Pay Act, any private employer with more than 100 employees in Illinois must obtain an “equal pay registration certificate” from the Illinois Department of Labor. Employers must obtain this certificate within three years of the amendment’s effective date—i.e., by March 23, 2024—and then every two years thereafter.
To apply for this certificate, the employer must submit a $150 filing fee, the employer’s most recent EEO-1 report, and a report of all employees from the past calendar year “separated by gender and the race and ethnicity categories as reported in the business’s most recently filed Employer Information Report EEO-1, and report the total wages . . . paid to each employee during the past calendar year.”
Continue reading “With an Eye Towards Pay Equity Illinois Enters the Wage Data Collection Game”
As part of the New York State Legislature’s push to pass legislation at the end of its 2019 Session, three anti-discrimination bills have been passed and sent to the governor for consideration. If signed into law by Governor Cuomo (as expected), the bills will: (i) prohibit employers from inquiring into job applicants’ wage or salary history; (ii) expand the protections of existing equal pay laws; and (iii) ban discrimination based on hair or hairstyle. The salary history ban and equal pay law amendments will go into effect 180 days after enactment, and the hair/hairstyle law will go into effect immediately upon signature. 