Dear Neighbor,
Today, the Senate passed our Menstrual Equity Bill! More on that soon!
Last Thursday, October 18, the Senate joined the House in passing our Frances Perkins Workplace Equity bill. The House already passed a very similar version, so final action should occur soon.
This bill is an important part, but only part, of addressing the pay gap. Women earn on average about a million dollars less over their working lives, and enter retirement with much less financial security. The same holds true for people of color, and particularly women of color.
So many people and organizations built the support needed to pass the bill! Here are a few who gathered outside the Senate chamber to celebrate. Megan Driscoll (Wage Equity Now Coalition - WEN), Keith Mahoney (Boston Foundation), Sen. Liz Miranda, Sam Chambers (Boston Foundation), me, former Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy (WEN), Vasundhra Sangar (AIM), Sen. Paul Feeney.
The Workplace Equity Act combines two bills.
One empowers employees with salary information when they are seeking jobs or a promotion.
It will helps employers, who won't have to go through the hiring process only to find the applicant won't take the job because of the pay.
Labor and Workforce Committee Co-Chair Rep. Josh Cutler, Rep. Brandy Fluker-Oakley and I filed that bill, which requires employers to post pay ranges when they advertise jobs. Ten other states have adopted similar bills. It will close a loophole in our 2016 Equal Pay Act. (Learn more about that history here).
The Equal Pay Act was the first in the country to ban employers from using someone’s salary history during hiring. Salary history can lock women and people of color into lower salaries for their whole careers. They start out with lower pay, and never catch up. Since then, 18 other states have adopted the ban on salary history.
But we learned that human resources departments no longer asked for salary histories. Instead, they asked applicants what their salary expectations were. Women and people of color tend to undervalue themselves; they ask for and receive less. So, as before, they are locked into lower wages for their whole lives. Knowing the potential pay range will help keep them from selling themselves short.
The second bill will require companies and public entities to share their federally required EEOC data with the Secretary of State. The data contains demographic workforce data — including by race or ethnicity, gender and job category. It would then be combined to provide aggregate reporting of wage gaps within business sectors.
That bill was led by Senators Paul Feeney and Liz Miranda, with Reps. Christine Barber and Dave Rogers. We hope that as employers become aware, as some did following the 2016 law, they work to equalize pay.
We combined these two bills in the Wage Transparency Bill. The Wage Equity Now Coalition, particularly Evelyn Murphy and Megan Driscoll worked hard and successfully to build support in the business community.
Here's a Globe story, emphasizing business support, particularly AIM.
We know that requiring posting of pay ranges will make a difference, because the Equal Pay Act worked.
In 2020, Newsweek reported on a study by economists at BU School of Law. The study found that "Banning employers from using salary history against prospective employees substantially closes wage gaps." This twitter thread summarizes the findings.
Forbes reported that "The study found a 5% increase in pay for all job changers, an 8% increase for women and a 13% increase for Black workers in areas that had enacted a salary history ban."
There are different ways to measure pay gaps.
The most common is comparing the pay for full-time year-round work. The National Women's Law Center reports that in 2021, women's pay in Massachusetts was 85.7% of men's. That's comparing women of all races and ethnicities to all men of all ethnicities. Compared to white, non-Hispanic men, Black women made 58.1%; Latinas made 53.3%; and white, non-Hispanic women made 81.1%. (Click on the report to see more details, state by state.)
Pay gaps are greater if you consider all workers, including part-time and part-year.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) wrote a comprehensive analysis. it examines many possible causes, like schedules, gendered occupations, union membership, education, motherhood, negotiation, location, and discrimination. It's discouraging that closing of the pay gap is partly due to men's wages dropping. (see chart on the left)
The Boston Women's Workforce Council analyzed reports from businesses that have signed onto the Council's 100% Talent Compact. Within those businesses, the wage gap for women increased from 24% in 2017 to 30% in 2021 - but the number of businesses in the Compact had grown from 60 to 134. We believe that as businesses pay more attention to these issues, encouraged by the Pay Transparency Act, the gap will be reduced.
The Women's Workforce Council has produced an easy wage gap calculator for businesses to use.
Many causes of the pay gap
No law can eliminate all the causes of pay gaps.
Some of the pay gap is due to education and experience. Women are much more likely to be primary caretakers for children and disabled adults, so they may delay or interrupt their careers.
But a large share of the pay gap is due to other factors, and some studies show that discrimination - often unconscious - is an important factor.
And some of it is due to gender-segregated jobs. Both women and POC are likely to be in caregiving and service roles rather than higher paying technical jobs. Occupations that are traditionally "women's work" - child care, senior care, care of adults with disabilities; preparing and serving food - those jobs are mostly all underpaid. The Boston Foundation released a report finding that "One driver of the pay gap is that society has undervalued work traditionally done by women." Our work is not done until those in the caring professions are paid what their work is really worth.
This year's Nobel prize in economics went to Harvard professor Claudia Goldin for her decades of work studying causes of pay inequity. A 2017 article concluded that the pay gap widens over people's lifetimes and that the cause "is split between men’s greater ability or preference to move to higher paying firms and positions and their better facility to advance within firms. Both factors increase with women’s greater family responsibilities."
Women in Leadership
The bill is named for Frances Perkins, a MA native, who was the first woman to serve as a US cabinet secretary. As Secretary of Labor, she led passage of the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, overtme pay, child labor). She set a high standard for us to follow!
As women have moved into positions of power, attention to issues of equity has increased. Senate President Karen Spilka not only led in passing the 2016 pay equity bill, but has made this bill a priority. She launched a study of Senate staffers' pay and created definitions of how much each job pays - and then standardized pay and instituted across-the-board raises.
I am the first woman to chair the Labor and Workforce committee. Women now lead powerful labor organizations: Chrissy Lynch is the newly-elected President of the Mass. AFL-CIO and Darlene Lombos is Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council. Brooke Thomson is now President of Associated Industries of Massachusetts. Andrea Campbell is our Attorney General and testified for the bill. We are confident that Governor Maura Healey will sign it!
Of course the Wage Equity Now Coalition, led by women, played an absolutely essential role in persistently working to build support and find solutions to barriers.
And the Caucus of Women Legislators - now 62 members, 31% of the legislature - made the bill one of five priorities. Sen. Joan Lovely, Senate Chair of the Caucus, spoke on the floor.
Stay in touch,
Pat Jehlen