We need more transparency — not less — when it comes to equal pay

From tax returns to visitor logs to conflicts of interest, this is not a presidency known for transparency. And so, it’s not surprising that Republican lawmakers are now calling on the White House to be less transparent about something else: fair pay practices. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) have asked the White House to keep us in the dark about pay disparities at thousands of companies across the United States.

In January 2016, the Obama administration took action to create a central database of private-sector pay information that regulators can use to shine a light on pay disparities and help the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) target its enforcement. This data would also be available to the public in aggregate form by industry. So, while we wouldn’t see anyone’s individual data, we could get a much better sense of how fair our pay is as compared to others in similar fields.

{mosads}Republican lawmakers, however, argue that the paperwork burden this action would create is not worth it. This begs the same question as keeping us in the dark on tax returns and visitors: what are they hiding?

Pay discrimination by gender is already illegal. But when employees, employers, and enforcement agencies do not know that discrimination is happening, they can’t fix it. Sixty percent of private-sector employees work in an environment that formally prohibits or discourages discussing salary information, so most women don’t know they are being paid unfairly. When pay information is secret, it is impossible for regulators to enforce the law.

Yet, we know pay discrimination still exists. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, employers pay Latina women 54 cents for every dollar they pay white men. For black women, it’s 63 cents. White and Asian women bring up the average for women overall to 80 cents for every man’s dollar.

Anyone who thinks the paperwork burden outweighs the burden of unequal pay clearly hasn’t been talking to the real people confronting discrimination and imbalances in pay. The women being paid 20 percent less for their work would say a little more paperwork is definitely worth it.

Consider Jasmin Bryant, a college student who’s worried about paying off her student loan debt and other bills. It’s likely that she’ll be paid less than her male colleagues in her future career because she’s a woman of color. Or Roxana Valladar, a single mom to a nine-year old girl who found out she was being paid less than a male in the same job and wants to make sure the same thing never happens to her daughter.

Most of us are brought up with the view that “it’s not polite to talk about money.” So we don’t. And in some states you could face retaliation from your employer if you talk about your pay. We need to protect people from that type of retaliation and make pay more transparent, especially to those responsible for enforcing the laws.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. We need to know what’s in the president’s tax returns. We need to know who is influencing the president and his staff in their visits. And we need to bring discriminatory pay practices to light. Once we are informed, we can act on that information.

America is a nation founded on the ideal that all of us are created equal. That should hold true at home and at work. Paying people fairly for the work they do shouldn’t depend on their gender. We need more pay transparency, not less, so we can finally achieve equal pay.

At a time when equal pay for equal work is more than twice as popular as President Trump, you would think the White House would do everything it could to promote and support it. But it won’t be surprising if they decide to hide the data away, along with those taxes and visitor logs. And once again, we can’t enforce the law or use important data to promote fairness and justice.

Julie Kashen is policy director at Make It Work, a nonprofit organization focused on creating policy solutions to help families make it work and ensuring public officials are doing the same.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.