Houston Employment Law Blog

It’s surprising that after all the fighting that women have done to first, get into the workplace, and now, to get paid equally that there would still be stories of women who are paid less than their male counterparts. Not just less, but, often, substantially less.

Earlier this summer Sports Illustrated told the story of tennis great, Martina Navratilova and where she is now. While she may have hung up her racquet over a decade ago, she is still an important influence in the tennis community.

Workers in the Houston area who are subject to bullying and harassment on the job can often feel confused and powerless in their workplaces. They may be unsure about what to do about the situation as any potential action could have unwanted consequences. Many workers remain silent about mistreatment by their managers or colleagues, hoping that the harassment will come to an end and that the perpetrators will lose interest. Others may file a complaint of some kind through an HR or grievance system, but they could be concerned about the potential for retaliation after taking action.

While any form of bullying in the workplace is contrary to a good, positive work environment, many types of harassment can go beyond the unpleasant and the unethical to the illegal. In particular, discrimination and harassment that is based on a number of protected categories violates federal and state laws. These include discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, disability, national origin, genetic information or age over 40. When people are the victims of discrimination or harassment based on these essential characteristics, it can be important to take action.

The Equal Pay Act became law in Texas and across the country on June 10, 1963. It mandates that women receive the same pay as men for the same work, but the pay gap continues and varies based on race as well. On average, women earn 80 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn according to data published by equalpaytoday.org. For the year 2018, Equal Pay Day was April 10. That's the day a woman had to work through to earn the money a man earned in 2017.

Broken down further, Asian women earned 87 cents to a dollar versus men while white women earned 79 cents; black women earned 63 cents per dollar of their male coworkers' pay, and Native American women and Latina women earned only 57 cents and 54 cents, respectively. A law professor at Howard University suggested moving Equal Pay Day to November 1 through which Latina women, for whom the gender pay gap is greatest, have to work to symbolically earn as much as a man earned in the previous year.

If companies in Texas and throughout the country use social media to target younger job seekers, that could be a form of age discrimination. According to a claim by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), older workers missed out on job opportunities because they were not shown ads for those positions. Companies such as Amazon and T-Mobile were said to make use of Facebook's filtering tools to exclude older job seekers.

In an amended filing, Facebook is said to filter advertisements by age to fill its own positions. However, Facebook is not a defendant in the case. It is believed that hundreds of companies not named in the complaint make use of filtering tools when advertising available job opportunities. A complaint was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in January, but the organization did not confirm that this was accurate.