On Jan. 26, 2017, the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Organization for Women (Mass NOW) and the Massachusetts Equal Pay Coalition hosted a presentation regarding their recently passed Equal Pay Law of Massachusetts. The event took place at Simmons School of Management.
The Equal Pay Coalition was founded by Mass NOW in an efforts to pass the Equal Pay Bill, The Massachusetts Coalition on the Status of Women, and the Women’s Bar Association (WBA). Their efforts were successful, and the Equal Pay Bill of Massachusetts was signed into the law by Governor Charlie Baker on Aug. 1 last year.
On the panel held this past Thursday were four organization members: Moderator Mary-dith Tuitt, a commissioner for the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women; Nina Joan Kimball, a founder of Kimball Brousseau LLP, a boutique employment law firm; equal pay consultant Katie Donovan; Mark Szypko, who is a compensation practitioner in sales compensation and base pay; and employers and policy makers. Szypko is also the Vice President of Compensation Strategy at Salary.com.
Mary-dith Tuitt opened by stating, “Tonight, we aim to share with you new protections we have under the established pay equity, as many of you know that was passed last year, and your current protections.”
The law claims that to narrow the gender wage gap, equal pay will have to be promoted. According to the new law, employees can be transparent about their salary with colleagues, employers can no longer ask salary history when hiring, and companies will have the legal obligation to review the salary paid to its employees. More specifically, the law states that “comparable work” should not be defined only by job title or description to determine equal salary; it is also required under the law. Comparability can now be defined if employees are under “similar working conditions.”
Further on into the event, Mary-dith Tuitt said, “sitting next to me is a commissioner, Nina [Kimball]…she was part of the Women’s Bar Association that helped draft the language of the Equal Pay Bill. I know many of you are saying, ‘well, didn’t we already have a language?’ So I want to ask…is there more that we should be looking at?”
Kimball, who helped to draft the language of the law, spoke a little more on this topic. “We are one of the few states that have comparable work. The problem was, what does comparable mean? There was a court decision in 1995-98 that defined comparable as identical…it doesn’t mean comparable anymore. So this statute, one of the things that it does is define comparable work in a way that is more understandable and make sure that it doesn’t mean identical.”
With the new law’s stricter definition of comparable work for employees, there is hope that, under the new law, the gender pay gap will narrow. Donovan goes more into the statistics of the law as she stated, “What we see now when we do the surveys is we see the aggregate. If you are a white male, you are making statistically twenty percent or more than everyone else. Let’s say you’re doing research…say the median a job pays is a hundred thousand. So you say, I want to make a hundred thousand, but statistically…with over five hundred, six hundred jobs, nine out of over five hundred or six hundred ladies make equal or more [than that amount].”
“There is still…a lot more to do,” said both Szypko and Donovan.
The law has yet to take effect, and is expected to on July 1, 2018.