The Office of Personnel Management, the agency which manages the civilian workforce for the federal government, announced a proposed ban on using previous salary history for setting payment offers, a move which officials contend will narrow the gender wage gap.
The new proposed rules would prohibit federal entities from considering salary history for employees in the General Schedule pay system, which currently incorporates 1.3 million members of the federal workforce. Agencies would instead need to rely on factors such as payment precedent for other employees with the same level of skill and experience.
“These proposed regulations are a major step forward that will help make the federal government a national leader in pay equity,” Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja said in a press release. “Relying on a candidate’s previous salary history can exacerbate preexisting inequality and disproportionally impact women and workers of color. With these proposed regulations, the Biden-Harris administration is setting the standard and demonstrating to the nation that we mean business when it comes to equality, fairness, and attracting the best talent.”
The Office of Personnel Management contended in the release that “implementing salary history bans can narrow the gender wage gap” and reduce “disparities for workers of color compared to white workers.” The federal gender pay gap for the civilian workforce was 5.6% as of last year.
Research has shown, on the other hand, that women tend to earn less than men because of factors such as the types of careers they choose, the number of hours they work, and the decisions they often make to exempt themselves from the workforce in order to raise children or care for elderly family members. Recent decreases in wage disparity may be attributable to the increased proportion of women entering fields historically preferred by men.
The proposed rules referenced an executive order from President Joe Biden to achieve “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” in the federal workforce, as well as a strategic plan which includes an “equity roadmap” calling for “policies that do not rely solely on prior salary history” to establish payment schedules. “Even with decades of progress building a federal workforce that draws from the full diversity of the nation, many underserved communities remain under-represented in the federal workforce, especially in positions of leadership,” the plan said.
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The diversity, equity, and inclusion movement, also known as DEI or DEIA, acquired a larger foothold in the public and private sectors after the social justice movement which spread across the nation three years ago. The Biden administration operates under a “whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities” and mandated earlier this year that members of the Cabinet must create “agency equity teams” to ensure federal workforces are sufficiently diverse.
Biden has announced on several other occasions that he would make critical nomination decisions based on the race and sex of the appointees. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre recently said that officials would “look at a highly diverse group of world-class economists” when selecting the next vice chair of the Federal Reserve because of the administration’s commitment to “diversity and representation.”