House lawmakers plan to contemplate laws Wednesday that might require companies with not less than 25 workers to record a wage or hourly wage vary on a job posting, a transfer that advocates argue would primarily assist ladies and other people of shade enhance their pay.
The invoice would put Massachusetts in keeping with 10 different states throughout the nation, together with Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut, for requiring pay disclosure but additionally place the commonwealth forward of the curve with annual mixture demographic and pay stories compiled by the state from federal types.
Advocates cheered the House’s plan to take up the invoice after the chamber’s Ways and Means Committee made clear Tuesday morning they have been advancing a model of the laws initially co-sponsored by Sen. Patricia Jehlen and Rep. Josh Cutler, co-chairs of the Labor and Workforce Development Committee.
Pay disclosure is critical “to “level the playing field for all workers, close persistent gender and racial wage gaps, and help businesses attract and retain talent,” Cutler mentioned in a press release to the Herald.
“Pay transparency is good policy for employees and employers alike,” the Duxbury Democrat mentioned.
The origin of requiring private and non-private companies with not less than 25 workers to reveal pay or wage ranges on job listings or to workers supplied a promotion partially stems from the final time the Legislature took a swing at pay fairness.
Jehlen mentioned this yr’s invoice would shut a loophole legislators found after they handed a 2016 invoice that required women and men be paid equally for comparable work and barred employers from asking potential employees to supply a wage historical past.
Companies nonetheless ask job candidates “how much do you expect to make,” a query that may lead ladies and other people of shade “to fall farther and farther behind,” Jehlen mentioned.
“Many times when you pass legislation, you think you’ve solved a problem, but then you discover there are little loopholes and unanticipated problems,” the Somerville Democrat mentioned in an interview. “And that’s what happened here — that we thought we had solved a problem, and we did partially solve it, but there was a loophole that people have used.”
A spokesperson for House Speaker Ronald Mariano mentioned the department will take up the invoice throughout a proper session scheduled to start out at 11 a.m. Wednesday, with votes anticipated to start round 1 p.m.
The Senate plans to take up the invoice “very soon” after the House vote, Jehlen mentioned.
“The Senate, I think, is poised to take it up pretty quickly because we’ve been working with Ways and Means, the Senate President’s office. We’re very optimistic that this can be passed very soon,” she mentioned.
Lawmakers settled on companies with not less than 25 workers as a result of different rights and advantages correspond to that variety of employees, together with Paid Family and Medical Leave, Jehlen’s workplace mentioned. Previous variations referred to as for a 15-employee threshold.
There is precedent in different elements of the nation for the 25-employee threshold, mentioned Megan Driscoll, who helps lead the Wage Equity Now Coalition, which backs the invoice and has been pushing lawmakers to cross variations of it for a number of classes.
“At about 25 is kind of a point in time in your growth as an organization where you start thinking about hiring more of one person,” Driscoll mentioned. “… It doesn’t burden small companies who may not know what their ranges should be yet. Yet, it gets companies to be thinking about ranges before they get too big and it becomes too difficult to go back and do that.”
Lawmakers suggest handing the Attorney General’s workplace the authority to implement pay disclosure, with fines reaching as much as $1,000 for third offenses, in response to the invoice textual content.
The invoice additionally requires companies with over 100 employers to submit demographic and wage stories they already file with the federal authorities to the Massachusetts secretary of state’s workplace. The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce would compile these into mixture wage information stories, the invoice mentioned.
The federal types wouldn’t be made public in Massachusetts beneath the proposal however the state would publish mixture information on companies’ demographics and pay, Driscoll mentioned.
“This is, we think, a model for the rest of the country and one that the rest of the country may follow,” she mentioned.
Members of the enterprise group have additionally backed the invoice, with the Associated Industries of Massachusetts arguing the proposal “strikes the right balance by promoting open communication about wages while not overburdening employers.”
“This bill sends a clear message: Massachusetts is committed to leading the way on pay equity and, in turn, attracting and retaining a workforce that will allow our businesses and economy to thrive,” AIM President Brooke Thomson mentioned in a press release to the Herald.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”