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Fisher Phillips adds a new practice group
SHERRY KARABIN
Legal News Reporters
Published: December 28, 2016
The management-side labor and employment law firm Fisher Phillips has added another practice group to address equal pay laws and other legislative changes impacting businesses.
The firm, which has offices in Cleveland and Columbus, officially formed the Pay Equity Practice Group on Nov. 16.
Partners Cheryl Pinarchick, Kathleen McLeod Caminiti and Cheryl Behymer serve as the practice group’s co-chairs.
“The firm has seen a tremendous increase in plaintiffs’ attorneys filing a variety of lawsuits related to pay equity issues,” said Behymer, who works out of the Columbia, South Carolina office.
“President Obama made the Equal Pay Act of 1963 a significant focus of his administration,” said Behymer, who also co-chairs the firm’s Affirmative Action and Federal Contract Compliance Practice Group.
“In 2010, he established the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force,” she said. “One of the members of the task force--the director of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which enforces the affirmative action compliance required by the federal contractor community--focused that agency’s efforts on identifying and investigating compensation disparities.
“As a result, federal contractors’ compensation systems have been subjected to greater scrutiny over the past several years.”
Caminiti said a number of bellwether states have enacted pay equity statutes for the first time, while others are amending them.
“There was a lot of chatter about pay equity during the recent election,” said Caminiti, who works out of the New Jersey and New York offices.
In January new laws took effect in California and New York that are more favorable to employees, she said. In August, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed amendments to the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act that become effective July 2018.
Caminiti said the Massachusetts statute contains a provision that provides employers with an affirmative defense if the company makes a “good faith” effort to identify and rectify pay equity disparities.
She said Cheryl Pinarchick, who works out of the Boston office, is already assisting employers in putting policies and procedures in place so that they can mount such defenses.
“We are definitely seeing an increase in collective action litigation filed under the Equal Pay Act,” said Caminiti. “Judges are applying the two-step process to conditionally certifying collective actions under the Equal Pay Act (EPA) that applies to collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This process spawned a lot of wage and hour litigation under the FLSA over the last decade and plaintiffs’ attorneys are now starting to catch on to the fact that pay equity claims under the EPA are subject to the same process.”
New EEO-1 reporting requirements are also set to take effect.
In a press release Pinarchick said, “The sweeping new EEO-1 reporting requirements will impose tremendous demands on employers to gather and report detailed pay data for the first time ever.”
“Every employer with 100 or more employees, including part-time workers, has been required to file an EEO-1 report with the government annually since the 1970s,” said Behymer. “It used to be that only race, ethnicity and gender statistics were required.
“Now the W-2 data for employees will have to be reported and the form has gone from one page to eight pages,” said Behymer. “It’s a tremendous burden for human resources personnel to fill out. We are being contacted by clients so we can get a feel for what their data will look like and identify any potential problems now so they can be addressed prior to their submitting the form to the government.”
The changes take effect for the 2017 reporting period, however the 2017 EEO-1 report does not have to be filed until March 31, 2018.
Complying with the EEO-1 reporting requirements, together with new and revised state pay equity legislation and increased litigation represent what Caminiti calls a “triple threat” to businesses.
Caminiti said she and her co-chairs began discussing how the various pay equity issues were beginning to overlap during meetings in the spring and summer and they thought a practice group dedicated to pay equity was needed to assist their clients with these challenges.
She said the firm’s management endorsed the group’s efforts and formally launched the Pay Equity Practice Group in response to client needs.
“We perceive pay equity to be one of the hot employment law topics for 2017 and beyond,” said Caminiti. “We felt it was important for our clients that we move quickly to address these issues and the practice group was formed as a resource for our clients across the country.”
The Pay Equity Practice Group contains just over a dozen attorneys from several of the firm’s 33 offices, including partners and associates.
Caminiti said she expects to expand the group with more attorneys from within the firm.
“Our attorneys are familiar with all aspects of state laws and we will work with clients to identify disparities in their workforces and help them implement practices designed to comply with the new laws and regulations,” said Caminiti. “We are also prepared to defend any and all claims that are filed.”