SOUTHFIELD, Mich., March 8, 2017 – In recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8th, Lear has joined our customer, GM, and over 100 employers who have taken The White House Equal Pay Pledge in making the commitment to follow the processes required to achieve gender equality and fair and equal pay practices.
Highlighting the critical role that businesses must play in reducing the national gender pay gap, at the June 2016 United State of Women Summit, the White House announced a new Equal Pay Pledge for private sector companies that share a commitment to equal pay. Each company signing this pledge commits to take action within their organization by conducting an annual company-wide gender pay analysis across occupations, reviewing their hiring and promotion processes, embedding equal pay efforts into broader enterprise-wide equity initiatives and identifying and promoting other best practices that will help ensure wage fairness for all workers. Until the new administration completes its review of all White House initiatives, Lear cannot formally take the pledge but is committed to following its guidelines and intent.
Like Lear, many of the over 100 companies that have signed the pledge to date have already taken significant steps to create pay equality and address unconscious bias and other structural barriers. “At Lear, our greatest asset and our competitive advantage is our people. We are passionate about having a diverse and inclusive global workplace that reflects and embraces varying perspectives based on differing professional and educational backgrounds, cultures, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and identification, age – and gender,” commented President and CEO Matt Simoncini.
Mr. Simoncini added, “We strive to be a company that values diversity, is an employer of choice and supports the communities where we do business. We believe in offering fair and equal pay for equal work and providing an environment in which all team members have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. In signing this pledge, we commit to continue monitoring our pay and benefit practices regularly and to maintain our focus on achieving a comprehensive approach to diversity and inclusion across the entire organization.”
Tom DiDonato, senior vice president of human resources, remarked, “We are a global company with a diverse customer base, in a very competitive industry. We rely on the diversity and creativity of our people to assure we are offering our customers the most innovative and competitive products and solutions. To attract the best and brightest, we cannot afford to ignore over 50% of the population and need to make sure we have a culture, policies and practices in place where everyone is able to contribute, feel valued and ultimately doesn’t want to work at any other company than Lear.”