Skip to main content

Colorado Implements Equal Pay Law...Effective January 1, 2021


A week or two ago, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed the Equal Pay For Equal Work Act into law which is set to take effect January 1, 2021.

This new legislation prohibits employers in the state from paying their employees different wages based upon an employee’s sex or the basis of sex in connection with another protected status (ie disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, national origin, or ancestry) unless one of the Act’s exceptions applies.  As well, employers will be prohibited from asking about an applicant’s wage rate history or discriminating or retaliating against an applicant for failing to disclose their wage rate history.

As noted, there are certain exceptions provided for by the Act that allow an employer to pay different wages based on sex if the employer is able to establish the difference in wages is reasonably based upon any of the following factors:  a seniority system; a merit system; a system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; the geographic location of where the work is performed; education, training, or experience to the extent they are reasonably related to the work in question; or travel if the travel is a regular and necessary condition of the work performed.

In addition, once the Act takes effect in 2021, employers will be required to announce to all employees employment advancement opportunities and job openings (and the pay range of the job openings.)  Further, employers will be required to maintain records of job descriptions and wage rate history for each employee for the duration of their employment, plus two years.

For those aggrieved employees, they will have a two year statute of limitations for their claims under the Act.  Notably, a violation of the Act occurs each time a person is paid a discriminatory wage rate. Accordingly, employees are entitled to recover both economic and liquidated damages along with their attorney’s fees and other equitable relief.  One benefit extended to employers is a good faith defense in so much that they can avoid paying liquidated damages if they can show that they had a reasonable basis for believing their pay rates were not in violation of the Act.

With over a year and a half until the Act takes effect, employers in Colorado would be wise to start implementing steps to ensure they are in compliance with the Act by January 1, 2021.


For additional information:  https://www.natlawreview.com/article/colorado-enacts-equal-pay-equal-work-law-effective-2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more