On Tuesday, according to Huffington Post, the Trump administration decided to halt implementation of President Barack Obama’s equal pay initiatives established in 2009.
Equal pay advocates see it as an attack on progress toward closing the wage gap while the Trump administration sees it as merely tweaking the policy.
This week the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a memo that said the “revisions include new requests for data on wages and hours worked from employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees.” The data being collected was supposed to be groundbreaking information on how people are being paid in the work force — but, the OMB has concerns about “privacy” and the stacks of paperwork the rule created.
In the past, Ivanka Trump has told the public that she is committed to fighting for equal pay for women. However, she still gave this move her stamp of approval, saying “while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results.”
As this removal comes just a few short days after Women’s Equality Day, the timing sends a bad enough message in itself for many in the movement for equal pay.
Vicki Shabo, the vice president for workplace policy and strategy at the National Partnership for Women and Families, told the Huffington Post that Ivanka’s backing of the step away from this program is particularly troubling.
“For somebody who has long held herself out as a champion for women and for gender equality, it’s really disappointing,” Shabo told Huffpost.
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, also said the so-called “tweaks” were actually “an all-out attack on equal pay.” She added that, if you’re a business owner who wants to keep systems where women recieve unequal pay a secret, “the [Trump] Administration has your back.”
And, apparently, so does Ivanka.