GREENWICH VILLAGE — Seizing on Equal Pay Day, Village lawmakers renewed a push for a bill that would require companies to reveal wage gap data in order to get contracts from the state.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Deborah Glick released a joint statement on Tuesday urging their colleagues in Albany to pass a bill they introduced in September.
“Wage discrimination sends a message that women are worth less than men and that businesses are free to cheat their workers. But we can’t fix what we cannot see," the legislators said in their statement. "In honor of Equal Pay Day we believe lawmakers in Albany should act swiftly to make equal pay for equal work a reality throughout the Empire State.”
The bill would apply to companies with 100 or more employees. The businesses would have to issue public reports on their wage gaps with respect to gender, race and ethnicity. But in order to protect employee privacy and proprietary information, the reports would not include specific individual salaries, total number of hours worked or mean hourly wages.
The legislation is based on similar rules governing federal contracts and build on existing law, Glick and Hoylman said. They hope that being required to disclose wage gaps will encourage companies to establish more equitable pay practices internally.
They highlighted research showing women make, on average, just 79 cents for every dollar men make, even when controlling for education, race and age. The gap is greater for women of color, they noted, citing a Center for American Progress study. And another study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research estimated that, based on current wage growth, the gap will not close until 2058, they said.
"New York must take action to hold state contractors accountable and ensure our tax dollars are being used in accordance with both state law and our shared notion of fairness," the pair said in their statement.
