Steve  0:09  
What if your wins at work didn't have to stop there? Workhuman's Employee Recognition platform is built on the world's largest rewards marketplace, tying recognition for great work to the things that people love outside it. Crush a project? Snag that baking dish you've been eyeing. Hit a milestone? Celebrate with a weekend getaway. With over 1 million gadgets, gift cards and experiences, something is redeemed for in Workhumans in house store every three seconds. Each reward deepens connections, boosts engagement and helps fuel a culture that knows their work matters and has the receipts to prove it. Head over to workhuman.com to learn more. Workhuman a proud supporter of the HRHappyHour Network. Thanks for joining us. Welcome back to the At Work in America show. My name is Steve Boese. I am so excited for today's show. We're taking on a topic that's actually near and dear to our hearts here on the show, we've covered it before, but not for a while, and it's super important, right? It gets to all the things that we care about on this show, opportunity, equity, fairness and a better workplace for everybody. So we're going to talk a lot today about pay, pay equality, pay transparency and fairness in the workplace, particularly for women. Our guest today is Noreen Farrell. Noreen is the Executive Director at Equal Rights Advocates, an expert on these topics, and really cool person too, and I can't wait to get into this with you. Noreen, first of all, thank you for joining us. And how are you?

Noreen Farrell  1:44  
Thanks, Steve. I I'm good. I'm lots of work these days, given, given the context, but really work alongside a lot of great HR professionals and advocates working our way through some tough issues in this in this context. 

Steve  2:03  
Yeah, thank you Noreen. They are tough issues. But before we dive into Hey, what's really on the on the front burner, right? For folks who care about these issues, because it seems to move fast, right, especially the last year and a half or so, but maybe tell us, let's step back for a second. Equal Rights Advocates has been around for quite some time. But for folks who may not be familiar, can you tell us a little bit more about the organization and the work you guys do?

Noreen Farrell  2:27  
Yeah, sure. We've been around for 52 years, and I've been at ERA for 22 years, and doing this work for about three decades now. And we're a national organization. We're a nonprofit that is working to make sure that there's gender, racial and economic justice for everyone, including workers throughout the country. And we do that through great work with employers, with through policy, work, enforcement actions. We really we think it's really important to share what people's rights are, and so we do a lot of education. And what's really wonderful about our work is we work with, you know, upwards of 500 different partners across the country, and so we can really keep our finger on the pulse of what are the trends bubbling up when we see a headline, what are the impacts? And we try to be responsive and make sure that there's, there's, there's enforcement of our of our employment laws, but also, you know that our workplaces are keeping up with sort of cultural progress on the issues that we're going to talk about today.

Steve  3:34  
Yeah, thank you, Noreen, I think it's, it's certainly been a period in the US, right, you know. And apologies to our international listeners who may not feel the pain of some of these specific issues quite so much where you're at, but here in the US, it seems to me right that in the last year plus, right since the new administration's come in, we've had some pretty significant changes, if not to the laws themselves, which I'm not feeling we might not have really changed any laws, but changed enforcement, postures, things we're emphasizing just the nature of what's considered, even just baseline terms like fairness, equality, things like that. I know there's a lot going on, Noreen, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest changes and then challenges that have come up that really are hitting these issues directly in the last, you know, year plus.

Noreen Farrell  4:31  
I think that what we've really seen is that, you know, laws on the books, and they're great laws that have opened up opportunities and created equity in 1000s and 1000s of workplaces across the country. You know, for as great as they sound on paper, they are not self enforcing. There is a whole infrastructure at both the state and federal level that make rights real right and so I think over the past year, we've seen the ways in which unchecked that infrastructure can really be eroded and making decisions not to actually enforce certain laws, removing guidance that both workers and advocates and employers rely on to help you navigate what might be complicated laws, and then also just sort of the chipping away of really important agencies that I think both workers and employers rely on to help support making those rights real in the workplace. And so, you know, in our country, it's coming from the top, through the executive branch, it's been a matter of policy to to erode at those rights, and I think our job is to have those checks and balances, both in our workplace policies, in how we're collaborating with each other in our courts, and so I think we're really getting a behind the look at the infrastructure and how that can weaken and what we should do about it.

Steve  5:59  
Yeah, thank you, Noreen. It's a great point because, you know, preparing for the show. And I was like, let me just make sure I know what some of these terms are. Not like, oh, Civil Rights Act 1964, right, Title Seven, non discrimination, protected categories. I'm like, I don't think that's changed. I don't recall it being repealed or changed, or any law that's different, that's still the same law from 1964 and but what's happening on the ground is not the same as it was even five years ago.

Noreen Farrell  6:31  
Yeah. And in fact, I think that what's what's been most concerning is the actual, the flipping of language as though it is illegal. So, you know, in in our history, we've, you know, we've, we've been in the workplace for five decades, we've seen these really common sense, not very controversial policies like diversity, equity, inclusion, making sure that there's training available to all kinds of workers so they can advance. These are the kinds of programs that have been fairly mild in the context of workers' rights work that have really benefited all workers, including men, including white women, including people of color. And we've really seen this narrative that those are actually discriminatory coming out of the federal government. And so our challenge is to not just sort of ride this tide and hope it ends, but to really make sure we're taking back our terms. We're showing how these these these kinds of programs, really work, and to also show what happens when they go away. And I think that we have in our favor right now the tracking of data that has shown what's happened in the workplace since January 2025. Happy to talk about that, but I think that what it's showing could startle us.

Steve  7:57  
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Noreen, I mean, it's we are seeing a lot of impact in the workforce, particularly hitting the women in the workforce, right? We because it's not just what happens at work too, right? And we can even sort of take a wider lens too, it's what's happening in the greater culture in society, so things like child care becomes inaccessible or unaffordable, if elder care, we were talking before the show about caregiving a little bit caregiving responsibilities tend to fall disproportionately on women who are working, and women are not working too, but, but, but on women as well, Right? And if they're not getting the supports they need from sort of governmental supports and others, right, then they might be pulled away from work, right? And now we're seeing, and I want to talk about this maybe a little bit more detail, the the wage gap, which we have been talking about literally forever, right, in sort of workplace conversations, the wage gap between men and women's not it's actually getting worse, right? For the first time in a really long time. So I feel like it's just one insult after another, particularly landing on women, women of color, but, but, all right, that's a long winded way of saying, like, where are we at right now? Right in terms of you guys at Equal Rights Advocates, we're focusing on this. I know you're focusing on a lot of things, but yeah, this is important right now, in light of everything that's going on here in this country.

Noreen Farrell  9:37  
Yeah, well, well, maybe I can just give you a little bit of a snapshot and and tell you what I'm seeing is happening from our perspective as contributors to some statistics that we're seeing and what we're doing about it. Because if, if we leave this with nothing else, is that there are plenty of tried and true, really clear solutions to what we're seeing that have been working in states across the country that we just need to get back to, and that are actually supported with people across the political aisle, across employer, you know, advocates, you know, groups. So we tracked this trend coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics between January and August of 2025 and it was very disturbing. We saw over 455,000 women leaving the workplace. And the two categories of women that left at really unprecedented numbers were black women and mothers. And you know, this comes at a time where there were massive terminations of federal employees, and black women happen to be, you know, a healthy percentage of that also at a time when, despite momentum in certain states to really address child care needs coming out of the lessons of Covid, for example, we saw companies going back to from partial remote to everyone having to be back in the office, we saw a, you know, continued stalls on paid family leave, on child care subsidies, on the really basic needs that people have to stay in the workplace and so. And as you mentioned, the wage gap widened. So the wage gap is the difference between the average earnings of men and women working, usually full time. We also track part time gaps because we know after covid, more women went into part time work, not of their choice. And you know, you know to a default no matter what demographic of woman you're talking about, the part time wage gap is expanding as well. And so we look at child care needs, we look at just wage equity, and we look at the programs that keep women in the workplace, and not just in, but thriving and advancing, and all the things that make it worthwhile to stay in the workforce during a tough time, and on all of those fronts, we are not seeing the commitment we need from Congress and the Executive Branch exactly. But also, we've seen federal agencies like the EEOC just refusing to really prioritize that. In fact, I think a dangerous trend is there. There are great federal agencies that work really hard with workers and employers to come up with guidance. How do we navigate this? What does prevention look like? What does a prompt response look like? And you know, many people listening to this podcast may be coming from big companies where they've got their HR machine working, but there are so many smaller employers in this country and smaller businesses that really do rely on this kind of guidance as they're building up their HR programs, as they're thinking about it, as they're hiring. And so it's, it's, it's critically important, I think, that we realign our federal agencies to be supportive of the goals of our Civil Rights Acts, Acts for the for the benefit of workers and employers that look to those agencies. It's also really important that we we look at the states that have worked right alongside with employer. I'm here in California right now. You had great corporate partnerships on pay equity, you know, companies like Salesforce, who even before.

Steve  13:31  
Yeah, pretty famous example, and I think I've reported on that one too. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. They did a real self audit and made a bunch of compensation adjustments based on some disparities they unearthed right in their own data.

Noreen Farrell  13:44  
Yeah, I think that. I think that's an example of there is a cultural zeitgeist that appears to be outpacing work changes and policy changes even, I mean, you think about Glassdoor people of a younger generation sharing what they make, what they left at I mean, people in our generation that secrecy was just really entrenched in our culture. But you know, when we started introducing, for example, pay transparency bills, which are so important, because it turns out, when people know what other people make, that they advocate for themselves differently, or they ask questions, okay, well, here's our scale. I'm here. How do I get to the higher scale? Oh, I need that training. Great. Let's organize that. I need that degree. Great. I'll make that happen. And that what came, I think, from a cultural zeitgeist of transparency among a different generation of workers who were posting their their salaries, and today, California was one of the first states to pass pay transparency laws. There were there were work, there were employers that were doing it already before we passed the law. And now one in four working women are able to see salary scales across the country. And you know, these are the kinds of just system changes, like breaking long standing cultural taboos and practices that have broke open I think what have kept, you know, those gaps really, you know, really stagnant and widening. So we look at for the pay for the pay gap, pay transparency. We look at whether or not working mothers and other caregivers are supported in the workplace. They don't have to be in and out like Yoyo's, because that impacts your, your income over.

Steve  15:30  
It sets back your your growth and your trajectory almost always right? Sure.

Noreen Farrell  15:35  
And we're looking at, you know, are women and those who've been historically underrepresented, are they making it into the highest wage jobs? And one of the sort of, I think, crystal ball dangers that's happening with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is the federal agency that is supposed to enforce our civil rights laws alongside all of us, they have been talking about getting rid of the requirement that employers track demographic data, so who's in what jobs, by race, class, sex, ethnicity, that really lets you look at, okay, am I making sure that there's pay not just pay equity between jobs, but there's pay parity, so people have opportunity to make more, and those are the kinds of things that you know. In California, our pay gap is closed by about 13% after we've passed about eight different laws related to pay equity, not relying on prior salary when you set your pay.

Steve  16:39  
I was just thinking about that one, right? There have been a number of jurisdictions that I that I can recall right, who've outlawed the requirement of candidate supply salary history, right, in an interview process, right? And often used as, okay? Well, if we know the candidates making x, we can try to give them x plus 5% and get away with that code, even if that's not reflective of the market value of that position.

Noreen Farrell  17:09  
I mean, I can share an example of that because it is, it was such a common sense fix. But for so long, look, all of us have thought about like, oh, just give them a little bit more. I we represented this woman named Aileen Rizzo, and she worked as a math educator in Fresno, and she came in and she was given the county's policy was give $5,000 more than what they made, right, no matter who it was, if it was a man woman, you know, they weren't thinking about how past salaries might be entrenched in discrimination that it made them lower. And so she she realized that she was making less than someone who, you know, had, like, eight years less experience than her. Brought it up, and it was an interesting case. It actually, you know, went, it went to the ninth, ninth circuit. It was under federal law, and the court said, yeah, just prior salary is not a job related, you know, condition that lets you make them pay less. And so we went ahead and passed that in the state law here in California. Now we've got it in about 17 other states. And it's this practice that actually is also really helping men, because we know that I think folks have, especially in terms of folks that are over 40 and 50, they tend to leave their job less. And so when you leave your job less, you're not getting those usual bumps that come with change in your job. And so you know you might come in having been someplace for 15 years and not in the market, raising your and so it's really helped, for example, older men in tech understanding, you know, what their value is, seeing those salary ranges. So if they're back into, you know, in the market, they're understanding how things have really changed in certain workplaces. And so these are just really common sense measures that, you know, just a broad range of employers are behind leading and what's important, I think, is that we haven't, I think, an increasingly national workforce, right? So companies don't necessarily just work in one jurisdiction or another, right? So even if federal law is, is, is, is not being enforced, or it's ever it's weaker. I think the call to action for employers is like, what is that? This is a very competitive job market? What is the, what is the highest standard that that employees are becoming used to in seeing from employers across the country and keeping that the bar.

Steve  19:38  
Right, you know, versus, right, a classic approach, right? That I know it. I've been in employers who sort of operated this way, right? What's the, what's the floor? And, you know, and let me just be a half step above that, or three inches above that floor, and I'll be, I'll be good, versus your approach. You're, you're talking about Noreen, we just say, hey, what's the what's the say, if California has the strongest laws protecting pay equity, shouldn't I aspire to have that filter throughout my entire organization, right? Not just where I'm, you know, legislatively mandated to do it, right? I think that's a great point. And we saw some of that in Covid, right? And companies tried to walk away from it. Many did where, when everybody kind of went to a remote, remote working many, you know, companies that could do it, and jobs that could do it, we had that debate about, well, a software developer in Palo Alto, you know, makes x dollars, and a software developer in Wichita Kansas makes quite a bit less, and if this remote worker has picked up and moved himself or herself to Wichita Kansas, should we cut their pay essentially, right? And many companies did. They did that, which was ludicrous, but they did it anyway. But saying you're thinking, Well, why do that right? Why would you approach the let me do the very least amount possible to be compliant, if you will. And I don't think that's long term a great strategy for an employer, whether it's pay equity or other issues as well.

Noreen Farrell  21:14  
I think it's also just to be blunt, it's just not efficient, because an organization like mine, we lead a campaign called Equal Pay today, we have 60 plus partners in states across the country. We're we're not just moving to change federal law. We have, over the past 13 years, been the force behind 200 stronger pay equity laws throughout the states. We are coming state by state, so if your particular jurisdiction doesn't require it yet, it still will. It soon will, because we have found that these, these these legal changes, are very popular. They're popular with voters. They're popular with workers. They you know, we're definitely building state by state, momentum for these policies that make sense. And so I feel like, as a matter of efficiency, having the highest floor is just an efficient way to keep, you know, not only keep workers, but keep running. You know, I don't know. I think you'd save a lot on legal costs trying to figure out all the Juris requirements. And this momentum is really strong. We have a we have a policy agenda this year in states across the country. So I just think that there's a lot of work to standardize because we don't think that your rights should depend on your zip code as a worker. And so, you know, that's, that's sort of the, that's sort of the push that we're doing in our work.

Steve  22:39  
I like that Noreen, because I think it's sort of, it's a challenge for organizations, but it's also represents a really strong opportunity, right? I mean, and some, some organizations will really only react when it's their hands are forced a little bit. And I for one, think that we're going to see a lot more demand for workers, even more, you know, they're that, even more so in the next 6, 8, 12, months, 18 months, you know, there are some macro kind of labor market trends happening right now in this country. Primarily, the labor force is is actually not getting any bigger, which is very, very unusual, right for this country. And there's a bunch of reasons why, which we don't need to talk about here, but, but it's it's not right, and participation rates are fairly high already right for most of the key demographics. So companies are gonna have to compete harder for talent, and one of the ways, certainly is, hey, we we value everyone. We're going to be a company that pays people fairly. We're going to treat people as individuals, as people. We're going to support their needs, both inside and outside of work. And these are not soft issues. These are not, you know, oh, woke issues. These are, these are hard business issues. And I think organizations who are not doing these kinds of things, even if the federal government's not forcing you to. So what, right? You should be, you should be doing many of these things anyway.

Noreen Farrell  24:09  
Yeah, I never thought that, you know, we'd have a worker advocate and company front lines of really great workplaces, but in a moment where the federal government is deprioritizing that, or, you know, weaponizing that, actually, I think it's a great opportunity for us to stay the course as high road employers. I am an employer myself and and show how these and how these, these policies really work. I mean, paid family leave for men and for women, the ability to care for your family and not have to choose that before your job. You realize you know, three, four months out for family care over the course of a career is you get that back in state, spades in terms of not having to recruit new employees, all the loyalty so, you know, I think that these are, that's the thing. These are very popular policies that are working in many states. And I think there, this is a moment of confusing messages, frankly, politically, but we need to kind of keep building on our, you know, our our work since 1964 to really give breathe life and into these, into these laws. And I've been really heartened by, you know, all of the likely and unlikely allies in this moment, in that.

Steve  25:37  
Noreen for for folks who are, you know, in you know, work for employers mid size, large employers, any size employer really listening to this or concerned about these issues, both from a personal level, but also from an organizational level. Can they partner with you guys directly? Is it indirectly, working on their own initiatives and supporting legal change? What's the best way employers can be involved in this work, aside from doing some of the internal stuff, of course, right? Doing those pay audits in house, making sure you're, you know, you're not disproportionately, I don't say discriminating is the right word, but disproportion, you know, your your pay structures and your progression paths in the organization are not out of whack. Obviously, there's a lot of internal work you can do. Is there other work they can do? Can they partner with you? Or what else can.

Noreen Farrell  26:26  
Yeah, I, I am, for example, a member of the Women's Business Collaborative, and it's a great organization of businesses that are committed to various worker justice issues. And we're we sit in panels together. We talk about pain points. Okay, this law passed, but this is the pain point, and it really that dialog is so important for us to to make tweaks and think about amendments and how we approach legal change that is really helpful. We have an incredible circle of employers that we love to lift up because they're doing such a great job on a variety of issues that workers care about. We have an action team to support our various pieces of legislation. And so I would just say that any employer that is proud of what they're doing, who want to give feedback, where there's pain points, equal rights advocates is an organization that they can come to, and our work will be better for it. So we appreciate that.

Steve  27:28  
Yeah, and you can go equalrights.org is the website too. I was on there this morning. That's a great domain, by the way. That's like, we're, you know, that's an equalrights.org

Noreen Farrell  27:38  
Thank you. That's what happens when you're found in 1974 you get the early.

Steve  27:43  
I know, every so often someone will tell me, Hey, how did, how did you get your name at Gmail as your email? I'm like, Well, you know, I think Gmail started and I signed up, like, the next day or something. So that's how you do it. But Noreen, this has been really, really interesting to me and and important as well. Like we are such strong advocates here at our company, but on the show and in the other media we do. Fact, I just did we do, I do a little workplace minute show, which is like three, you know, five minute little commentaries on news of the day. And I just went off hard. I know we didn't talk about this on the show today, but I went off hard on the CEO of AT&T. I'm sure you saw this who who publicly said, We need younger workers at this company, and now they're being sued by a couple of folks who for age discrimination, who were let go in a series of downsizing efforts. Maybe, maybe they'll win, maybe they won't, I don't know, but the fact that you know you've got people at companies like that, right? Massive employers, a heritage. You don't say anything about this if you you know, I don't want them to cut off your phone. I mean, if you're an AT&T customer, I'll say it. You can't do that. And that's just one example. It happened to be age discrimination. That could be if you're willing to say that out loud, there's probably some things you're not willing to say out loud that you're probably thinking so I think.

Noreen Farrell  29:03  
Yes, Steve, we are watching closely what's coming from the top, from CEOs, everything from the assumption that women can't be engineers to asking for a more masculine workplace to enough company like SpaceX that's being sued because its CEO has a lot of misogynist imagery that on social media that's affecting his employees. Look, you know, you can make great worker morale a transformational priority of your organization, or you can go the other route at your peril. And so I think it's, I think it's really important to call that out.

Steve  29:37  
That's a great, great cap, I think, to the conversation. And, yeah, because you could go on for a while, I could start ranting, which probably no one wants to hear. But I do want to ask people to go to equalrights.org check out the resources and information they have on the website. It's a really cool website. Find what Noreen and their teams are doing. Advocate for your own employees, advocate for the people in your community, and advocate for just better workplaces overall. That's what we try to do here on the show, and all the shows that we do, and you guys are doing just wonderful work. And I'm so happy we got a chance to chat today. Noreen, it's great to see you.

Noreen Farrell  30:12  
Yeah, thanks so much. And sign up for the action team, because you can hear about what we're doing once a week. We Don't bombard people with what's going on around the country. I really appreciate this show all you're doing, and I look forward to more conversations to come.

Steve  30:24  
Absolutely. Noreen, thank you so much. So equalrights.org sign up for the action team. Thanks so much. I want to thank everybody for listening to the show and putting up with me a little bit today. I don't care. You know, we're passionate about these topics, and I hope you are too. So that's it for At Work in America today. My name is Steve Boese. Go to hr.hrhappyhour.net. For all the show archives or anywhere you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next time.

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