“It is a tremendous achievement that Starbucks has reached and is committed to maintaining pay equity across gender and race in its United States workforce. The fact that the company is expanding its commitment to fair wages across the globe is truly extraordinary.

The gender wage gap is painful, pernicious and persistent in the United States. Women who are employed full-time, year-round are paid just 80 cents for every dollar paid to men. For mothers, the wage gap is 70 cents, for Black women it is 63 cents and for Latinas it is just 54 cents. We need many more companies — especially in the retail sector — to follow Starbucks’ lead by leaving salary history out of interview processes, making pay ranges available, prohibiting retaliation against workers who discuss their pay, and standardizing starting pay for managers. These best practices promote fair pay and demonstrate a real commitment to employees, their families and communities.

In January, we commended Starbucks for its new paid sick days policies. Here, again, the company is demonstrating the kind of leadership we need to change our culture as well as our workplace policies and practices. Taken together with Starbucks’ history of providing access to health insurance and college education, these bold, laudable moves promote the well-being and economic security of women and all workers, their families and communities, and make it possible for women to operate as equal members of the workforce and full members of society.

As we approach Equal Pay Day on April 10, we hope many more companies will follow Starbucks’ lead, that the administration will allow the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to proceed with collecting pay data, and that Congress will pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would establish stronger workplace protections for women and better enable us to fight wage discrimination.”