Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Pay equity and hiring practices
It’s not clear whether the Trump administration will target every initiative that stemmed from Biden’s DEI executive order.
For example, the Biden administration banned federal agencies from asking about an applicant’s salary history when setting compensation, a practice many civil rights activists say perpetuates pay disparities for women and people of color.
It took three years for the Biden administration to issue the final regulations, and Trump would have to embark on a similar rule-making process, including a notice and comment period, to rescind it, said Chiraag Bains, former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Biden and now a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings Metro.
Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates, said that she was hopeful that the Trump administration “will not go out of its way to undo the rule,” which she said has proved popular in some state and cities that have enacted similar policies.
And Biden’s DEI plan encompassed some initiatives with bipartisan support, said Bains. For example, he tasked the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council with expanding federal employment opportunities for those with criminal records. That initiative stems from the Fair Chance Act, which Trump signed into law in 2019 and bans federal agencies and contractors from asking about an applicant’s criminal history before a conditional job offer is made.
Bains said that’s what Biden’s DEI policies were about: ensuring that the federal government was structured to include historically marginalized communities, not institute “reverse discrimination against white men.”
Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, Farrell said, “the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.”
“Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,” she added.
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
