38. 27 “Right-to-work” states are U.S. states that have laws saying employees cannot be required to join a union or pay union dues (or “agency fees”) as a condition of getting or keeping a job.
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After this I'm going to talk about states with interesting laws like those that address gender pay disparity and pay transparency.
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39. Two weeks' notice has no legal basis. All US states except Montana are at-will employment, meaning either party can end the relationship at any time for any reason or no reason at all, assuming something like discrimination isn't involved.
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40. Montana is unique for its 1987 Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act (MWDEA), which, after a six-month probationary period, prohibits employers from firing employees without good cause (e.g. performance or business needs).
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41. The following states now have laws requiring pay transparency practices like reporting and including pay range in job descriptions.
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42. There has been debate about whether such laws increase pay, with some evidence indicating that they mostly curb pay at the higher end of the range and thus lower the average. But they do increase the publication of pay ranges in job descriptions more than whining about the subject on LinkedIn.
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43. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibits sex-based wage discrimination but applies a relatively narrow standard—requiring equal pay for “substantially equal” work in the same establishment. Women's earnings rise from 62.3% of men’s earnings in 1979 to 81.1% in 2018. See 31 above.
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44. Many states have their own legislation. Usually, as in the case of Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, the require equal payment for broadly "similar job duties" rather than just the "substantially equal" in the federal definition.
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45. Enforcement is another issue that may be stronger at the state level. Department of Labor Wage and Hour has 611 investigators to oversee compliance for approximately 165 million U.S. workers, or about one investigator per every 250k workers
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46. In comparison, for example, Colorado has about forty investigators for about 3m workers, or one per every 70k.
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47. From what I've heard it could take (before Trump) about a year to get a DOL claim adjudicated versus under six months in Colorado and over two years in Texas. This is just anecdotal from my own experience with Colorado Department of Labor and Employment
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Michigan is off the list!
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Oh good!
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