Equal Pay Day was last Tuesday.  Commentators and media outlets covered the current status of the gender wage gap and the efforts to eliminate it.  The Washington Post reported on the controversy surrounding the frequently-cited statistic that women earn 79 cents per for every dollar earned by men.  Fast Company argued that the gender wage gap will ruin the U.S. economy.  Time wrote that women can’t wait until 2059 – the date the wage gap is expected to close without intervention – for equal pay.  Employers also made announcements.  Facebook and Microsoft announced that they have eliminated their wage gaps, while the CEO of MasterCard stated that “every single woman” at the credit company “gets paid exactly what a man gets paid for the work they do.”

Discrimination

• Local 25 of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association and its apprenticeship program will pay over $1.6 million to settle part of a race discrimination lawsuit brought by the EEOC.
• Fast Company advised women and minorities how to avoid the “glass cliff.”
• Twenty-nine former employees of General Mills accused the food giant of age discrimination.
• NPR aired a story on the unintended consequences of blind hiring aimed at reducing bias.

Technology

• Meghan M. Biro described her concerns about big data, privacy, and data breaches.
• John Sumser discussed the current state of people analytics and where it’s going while Personnel Today covered ethical and legal concerns associated with the technology.
• Business Insider covered a new start-up trying to automate corporate jobs.
• A new sticker-like wearable debuted and promised to offer new heart-rate monitoring and a replacement for paper tickets.
• The cybersecurity risk known as ransomware can block access to cloud storage.
• Inc. wrote about how Daniel Kahneman believes robots will replace CEOs.
• Tim Sackett listed the top 70 applicant tracking systems in 2016.
• In-house counsel questioned the need for a new U.S. Senate bill that would require companies to have a cybersecurity expert on their board.

In other developments:

• After several states probed “on-call” scheduling, many retailers have ended the practice.
• Thompson’s HR Compliance Expert published a debate on clock watching under the FMLA.
• Bloomberg covered how the tech industry’s “women problem” is advancing paid family leave.