On January 29, 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) published a proposed revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1). The proposed revision to the EEO-1 would require employers to report data on the EEO-1 regarding their employees’ W-2 earnings and hours worked.
Currently, employers report on the EEO-1 their employees’ race, ethnicity and sex by job category. The proposed regulations would require employers to also report W-2 earnings by pay bands. The regulations provide for 12 pay bands for each job category. Under the proposed revisions, employers would also report on the EEO-1 the number of hours worked in each pay band. The EEOC encourages employer comments on how the hours worked should be collected.
The EEOC believes that the proposed wage information will assist it and other government agencies in identifying pay discrimination and also assist employers in promoting equal pay in their workplaces. However, the aggregation of multiple job classifications into job categories and the use of W-2 earnings means that the information will not correspond to the standards for violation of the Equal Pay Act or Title VII. It is therefore likely that the data will give misleading impressions of employer compliance and result in costly proceedings where no violation exists.
Under the proposed revisions, the first EEO-1’s with pay information would be due on September 30, 2017.
Members of the public have until April 1, 2016, to comment on this change. Frantz Ward LLP will continue monitoring this proposed regulation.