EEOC: Psychiatric center allegedly prioritized and promoted less qualified male therapist over female colleagues

Diving brief:

• The Maryland Department of Health’s Thomas B. Finan Center, a comprehensive psychiatric facility, has agreed to pay a total of $270,000 to four recreational therapists to settle an equal pay lawsuit brought by the U.S. Commission on equal employment opportunity, the EEOC announced Dec. 3.
• According to the amended complaint in EEOC v. Thomas B. Finan Centerthe center allegedly hired a less experienced man for a junior therapist position and paid him a higher salary than female therapists – allegedly to give him an advantage, as a man, over salary-based salary guidelines prior. He then promoted him three times in 13 months to positions for which he was apparently unqualified and continued to pay him more than female therapists, who had more seniority and were supervising him at one point.
• After the center allegedly ignored female therapists’ requests to equalize their pay, the EEOC sued it for violating the Equal Pay Act. Pursuant to a consent decree, the $270,000 includes damages and back pay for the women. Furthermore, during the two years of the decree, the center must provide at least two hours of training for all HR personnel and other employees involved in setting employee salaries.

Dive overview:

Under the Equal Pay Act, men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in the same workplace. Importantly, this does not mean the work must be the same, the EEOC explains in its guidance.

Instead, the EPA requires employers to pay equal wages to men and women in the same establishment who perform jobs that require “substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under conditions of similar work,” the directive states.

Additionally, to correct a pay gap, employers must increase the salary of the lowest-paid employee, not reduce the salary of the highest-paid employee, according to the guidelines.

The law allows for differences in pay based on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of output, or a factor other than gender. But the employer has the burden of proving that these factors apply, the EEOC says.

Recent EEOC settlements may shed light on how EPA-related issues arise. In November 2022, for example, Baltimore-based Jerry’s Chevrolet and its subsidiary, Jerry’s Motor Cars, agreed to pay $62,000 to resolve an EEOC lawsuit alleging they paid a warehouse dispatcher less than a warehouse dispatcher for comparable work, then fired her afterwards. she complained.

According to the complaint, the dispatcher discovered that her male counterpart was earning nearly $800 more per month. The dealers also allegedly paid him, but not her, a monthly bonus, the EEOC said.

Additionally, the dealers allegedly retaliated against the dispatcher in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when they fired her a week after she complained to HR about unequal employment. salary, the EEOC claimed, although the dealers argued she was fired for inappropriate behavior.

“More than 60 years after the Equal Pay Act, it is not only illegal but unacceptable to treat men and women differently when negotiating and setting wages,” noted an EEOC district director in an agreement of June 2023.

In this case, a Wisconsin school district agreed to pay $450,000 to settle EEOC allegations that it paid nine female special education teachers and a school psychologist less than recently hired male employees for the same job. Women would also have had an experience comparable, or even better, than that of their male colleagues.

In the Finan Center case, the EEOC alleged that the male therapist was promoted more quickly than women to non-posted positions in order to obtain higher pay and that he was given a lighter workload.

The case also warns employers about how they use wage guidelines: to the extent that wage inequity was imposed by state wage guidelines – which “rely solely on prior salary with no recourse available for women (therapists), thus mandating unequal pay for equal work.” “- the center violated the EPA when it applied these guidelines to therapist salaries, the EEOC alleged.