The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against 10 oil companies operating in 12 states associated with the umbrella True Oil LLC for paying female accounting clerks less than men for essentially the same work.
The company, which has employed at least 37 clerks since 2010, has also been paying female clerks less than men over that time, according to the complaint. Yet the agency says both genders were doing “substantially equal work under similar working conditions.”
For example, a male clerk with one year of accountant experience and 11 years as a store manager with some bookkeeping experience was paid a starting wage of $17.74 an hour in 2010 and eventually paid $21 an hour, according to the complaint. Yet a woman hired at the same time as him who had 17 years of accounting experience made just $15.07 when she was hired and only ever got up to $16.93, more than a $3 per hour pay gap. Another woman with 10 years experience running her own business and five years bookkeeping experience was also hired at a lower starting wage and only made it to $17.91 an hour by 2013. The EEOC says it filed the lawsuit after its attempt to reach a settlement failed. The complaint also says that at least two of the oil companies have contracted for the federal government and therefore signed agreements saying they would comply with equal pay laws. The agency is seeking lost wages and damages as well as the prevention of discrimination for future employees.
True Oil did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a spokesman told the Associated Press, “The lawsuit presents inaccurate information to create a false picture of how we operate.” It says it’s been cooperating with an investigation from the EEOC since 2012, but that it will fight the lawsuit in court.
While women make up less than 18 percent of the people who work in oil and gas, they can make good money, earning $866 a week at the median. But they still make less than men, earning about 75 percent of what men in the field make. That’s worse than the gender wage gap overall, which stands at 78 percent for all women working full time, year round.
Women also have a tough time climbing to the top of the male-dominated industry. There are zero female CEOs among the country’s largest oil, gas, and mining companies and they make up 13.5 percent of executives.
It may not sound surprising that women make less than men in industries that men dominate. But men also make more than women in female-dominated ones like nursing and teaching. In fact, they make more than women in virtually every kind of job available.
Yet lawsuits over equal pay are not terribly common: there were less than 1,000 charges from the EEOC last year. Cases where a plaintiff alleging pay discrimination is successful are even less common, as they have only won about a third of cases brought over the last decade.