Legislation that has passed the House and is now under review by the Senate would hamstring employers from paying reasonable wages in the name of fighting pay discrimination against women, a Chicago-based public-interest group’s leader said on a radio program recently.
"It also would keep the employer from being able to have any understanding of what they should or should not be paying someone and what that person is or is not willing to take," Liberty Justice Center President Pat Hughes said on the radio show “Illinois Rising.” "Look, this is absurd. If a private employer wants to hire an employee, they need to know what this employee has done in their career and what the employee has been paid so that they don't overpay for that employee and add additional cost to the structure of their company, to their investors, to their stockholders, to their everything else. That's what the employer is required to do; it's their fiduciary duty."
Hughes also is co-founder with Dan Proft of the Illinois Opportunity Project. Proft is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
On April 26, the House passed HR 2462 by a vote of 98 to 24. The measure would bar employers from asking job applicants to provide their wage or salary history unless it is already publicly available information or the applicant is applying for a job at the same company.
While the law would affect both men and women, proponents of the bill, which was sponsored by Rep. Anna Moeller (D-Elgin), say it would help curb wage discrimination against women by ensuring a salary offer not be based on an unequal wage that has already been paid.
The bill is under review by the Senate Labor Committee.
HR 2462 is one of several recent proposals thought to be important to women in the state. Others have included legislation to provide breast-feeding rooms in high schools and free feminine hygiene products in school restrooms.
Last summer, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill that repealed the so-called “tampon tax” on feminine hygiene products.
Hughes argued, though, that HR 2462 is government intervening in an otherwise functional relationship between a company and prospective employees.
"It's an even exchange," he said. "If an employee doesn't want to give that salary information, they don't have to. And then the employer can decide whether or not they want to hire them."
Individual employees already have the option, without government legislation, to seek work in a company that doesn't require wage history, Hughes said.
"In a free market economy, private businesses and private people should be able to negotiate these things among themselves," he said.
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