California’s Equal Pay Act and Why it is Considered to be the Toughest in the Nation

Economics
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The California's Equal pay act is a step towards closing the insistent wage gap between men and women. Employers need to prove that any existence of a pay gap between the employees is on the basis of factors like the seniority system, the merit system, systems that measure earnings by the quality and quantity of production, or education, training or experience not gender. The legislation also protects employees from payback for sharing information regarding the salaries or inquiring about the colleague's compensation. This increases wage transparency as employees will not be prohibited to discuss their wages with fellow colleagues. This will also encourage the employees to exercise their rights under the Act (Reilly, 2015).
The bill goes ahead than the already existing fair pay regulations to establish a standard of equal pay for "significantly similar work" instead of "equal work." This closes the leeway for those employers who will use gender-rooted differences in compensation (Reilly, 2015). Also, the new law requires employers to maintain records of the employees. Such records include; wages and rates of pay, job classifications as well as other terms and conditions of employment for three years (Terman, 2015).
According to research conducted by the U.S Census Bureau, it revealed that women in California are paid significantly less yet they work full time. Approximately, they are paid a median 84 cents lower than men for every dollar. The bill is addressing such inequalities that have plagued the state for long and burdened women for decades. Employers who pay less salaries to women than men for similar jobs will be banned. It does not matter if they hold different titles, as long as they are delivering substantially similar work, the pay must be equal (Reilly, 2015).
The law is termed as the toughest in the nation because businesses already foresee many law...