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BILL TO PROHIBIT GENDER-BASED PAY DISCRIMINATION APPROVED IN FIRST DEBATE
[/vc_column_text][us_separator][vc_column_text]Last Tuesday, August 30, 2022, the Legislative Assembly approved in its first debate Bill No. 21,170, which seeks to modify section a) of article 69 of the Labor Code and repeal Law No. 212; the purpose of this is to prohibit pay discrimination based on gender. In this sense, based on the Law for the Promotion of Women's Equality, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS), through a reasoned and substantiated resolution, will define and periodically update the labor or professional sectors or subsectors, whose employers will have to comply with the obligation to prepare a semi-annual report and send it in the months of January and June of each year to the National Directorate of General Labor Inspection of the MTSS, which must contain:
- Total salary expenditures for the previous six-month period, which must detail the employees' qualifications, position, number of days or months worked, and the regular salary they were individually paid during that period.
- Salary distribution between women and men by area and position, including raises, bonuses, extraordinary salaries, and performance incentives granted during the semester.
In the event of non-compliance with this obligation, the following shall apply:
- When the employer does not submit the report, he will be sanctioned with the fine provided for in section 1 of article 398 of the Labor Code, namely: "From one to three monthly base salaries”.
- When the report submitted contains false or altered information, the corresponding complaint will be sent ex officio to the Public Prosecutor's Office to establish the employer's liability for the crime of falsification of private documents (Article 368 of the Penal Code).
- When gender-based pay discrimination is proven against one or more female workers, the employer shall be sanctioned with the fine provided for in section 3 of article 398 of the Labor Code, namely: "From eight to eleven monthly base salaries", and must also compensate them with the difference in pay that they did not receive during the entire period in which this discrimination occurred.
Likewise, this amendment establishes the obligation for the Administration to comply with the regulations set forth in the Law on the Protection of Individuals against the Processing of their Personal Data, Law No. 8968. This is a bill that is advancing through the legislative process; the next stage is its approval in the second debate, so at Lexincorp we will be monitoring it closely and reporting promptly on its final approval. [/vc_column_text] [us_separator] [vc_column_text] Written by: Lic. Eugenio Vargas [/vc_column_text] [/vc_column] [/vc_row]
