JULY 24, 2024
Today the Representative Connolly joined his colleagues in the Legislature to take a strong step towards closing the gender and racial wage gap in the Commonwealth by passing H.4890, An Act relative to salary range transparency. The legislation requires employers with 25 or more employees to disclose a salary range when posting a position and protects an employee’s right to ask their employer for the salary range for their position when applying for a job or seeking a promotion.
"Across the Commonwealth and United States woman and people of color are paid less than their coworkers, and that starts with the job listing. That's why I was excited to send the Governor a bill requiring salary range disclosure for new job listings," Representative Connolly said. "With this law we are one step closer to realizing the vision of equal pay for equal work."
When signed into law H.4890 would make Massachusetts the eleventh state to mandate pay transparency by requiring employers to disclose salary ranges, according to the National Women’s Law Center. H.4890 builds on the Legislature’s 2016 passage of the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, which prohibited wage discrimination based on gender and brought long-sought fairness and equality to workplaces in the state.
The bill requires employers with more than 100 employees to share their federal wage and workforce data reports with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD), which would then be responsible for compiling and publishing aggregated wage and workforce date to help identify gender and racial wage gaps by industry. The bill makes a necessary update, following the Equal Pay Act of 2016, to prevent earned wage adjustments from triggering the anti-spiking provision.
In Greater Boston, the 2023 gender wage gap was 21 cents, according to the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. This gap becomes more pronounced when comparing white men and women of color, where Black/African American women face a 54-cent wage gap, Hispanic/Latina women face a 52-cent wage gap, and Asian women face a 19-cent wage gap.
Having passed both chambers, the bill now goes to the Governor’s desk for her signature.
