RILA Reacts to EEOC Reporting Proposal

The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) issued the following statement in response to a proposal from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that would require businesses with 100 or more employees to report compensation data for ten job classifications broken down by race, ethnicity and gender.  

Compensation data would need to be provided for extremely broad job categories, such as professionals, technicians and sales employees, without regard for the range of job skills within each category, or in some cases, the regional differences in compensation. The administrative burden would be tremendous, potentially requiring businesses to provide thousands of data points for every location. 

“The EEOC’s proposal fails to recognize the substantial shortcomings of the resulting data. Requiring businesses to provide potentially thousands of data points for each location would obscure, not illuminate relevant patterns. For example, the common compensation differences between urban and rural areas or the wide range of jobs within single reporting groups would be ignored in the data yielded. In the end, the compiled data would be attractive fodder for those eager to mislead,” said Kelly Kolb, vice president for government affairs. 

The EEOC has invited public comments on the proposal, which RILA will provide in the 60-day window. 

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RILA is the trade association of the world's largest and most innovative retail companies. RILA members include more than 200 retailers, product manufacturers and service suppliers, which together account for more than $1.5 trillion in annual sales, millions of American jobs and more than 100,000 stores, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers domestically and abroad.