President Barack Obama gives two thumbs up as women s rights activist Lilly Ledbetter acknowledges him Tuesday in the East Room of the White House at a
President Barack Obama gives two thumbs up as women s rights activist Lilly Ledbetter acknowledges him Tuesday in the East Room of the White House at a news conference on equal pay for women. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

WASHINGTON -- In a concerted election-year push to draw attention to women's wages, President Barack Obama signed directives Tuesday that would make it easier for workers of federal contractors to get information about workplace compensation. He seasoned his move with a sharp rebuke of Republicans whom he accused of "gumming up the works" on workplace fairness.

Obama made a clear partisan appeal to women with an executive order that prohibits federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their pay. He also directed the Labor Department to issue rules requiring federal contractors to provide aggregate compensation data by race and gender.

"This is about Republicans seemingly opposing any efforts to even the playing field for working families," Obama said at a White House signing ceremony, surrounded by women advocates and accompanied by Lilly Ledbetter, a woman whose namesake legislation on pay equity was the first bill Obama signed into law in 2009.

Obama's executive order and directive to the Labor Department dovetailed with the start of Senate debate on broader legislation that would make it easier for workers to sue companies for paying women less because of their gender.

White the president's actions affect only federal contractors, those directives can have a wide and direct impact. Federal contracting covers nearly one-quarter of the U.S. workforce and includes companies ranging from Boeing to small parts suppliers and service providers. Such actions also can be largely symbolic, designed to spur action in the broader economy.


The Senate legislation, like Obama's narrower executive order, would forbid companies from punishing workers who share salary information and would allow punitive and compensatory damages in lawsuits.

The National Labor Relations Board and some federal courts already have said that company pay secrecy rules are prohibited under the National Labor Relations Act. But cases against violators can only be brought by the NLRB on the basis of a complaint. The Senate bill, however, would spell out the prohibition and allow private lawsuits, which could be more financially penalizing than NLRB actions.

"Pay secrecy fosters discrimination, and we should not tolerate it, not in federal contracting or anywhere else," Obama said.

Backed by business groups, Republicans are expected to block the bill when the Senate holds a showdown vote, probably Wednesday. The GOP derailed similar legislation in the Senate the past two election years, 2012 and 2010.

Even so, Democrats are pushing the bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., as part of a campaign-season agenda designed to contrast their efforts to help middle-income voters with Republicans, and to motivate pivotal Democratic-leaning voting blocs like women.

Underscoring the politics behind the efforts, Democrats were aggressively soliciting campaign contributions, accusing Republicans of standing in the way of pay equity. Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Chris Coons of Delaware, for instance, sent out emails Tuesday drawing attention to the pay gap and directing supporters to a contribution site that was compiling donations for House and Senate Democrats.

Republicans argued through their campaign committees that the Senate legislation would hurt women by restricting job flexibility and merit pay.

At a news conference, five male Democratic senators said the issue of equalizing pay for men and women was more than a women's issue.

"Rebuilding the middle class begins with good-paying jobs. And those good-paying jobs won't happen if women are systematically denied fair pay simply based on their gender," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate's No. 3 Democratic leader, said equalizing pay for men and women was a popular issue and warned Republicans opposing the measure, "We're going to come back to this issue several times this year."

Obama's executive actions are part of his drive to act on his own when Congress stalls on his policy initiatives. The executive order and the presidential memorandum to the Labor Department are his latest directives on wages, pay disparities and hiring targeting the federal government's vast array of contractors and subcontractors.

Census Bureau figures show that the annual earnings of women were 77 percent of what men earned in 2012, a difference that has barely budged over the past decade.

When measured by hourly earnings, that difference is a narrower 86 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The larger gap is in part because women tend to work fewer hours than men and because the annual figures includes items omitted from the hourly data, including tips and bonuses.


Associated Press