Mass. pay equity bill up for committee vote
Lawmakers plan to move Wednesday on legislation aimed at strengthening the state's gender pay equity law, which would free up private sector workers to share information on salaries without fear of losing their job.
The Committee on Labor and Workforce Development will open a poll on the bill and four others at 9 a.m. Wednesday, according to Elysse Magnotto-Cleary, chief of staff to Sen. Dan Wolf, the Senate chair of the committee. Magnotto-Cleary said Wolf and House Chair John Scibak will recommend a favorable vote on language unchanged from the bills filed by Rep. Jay Livingstone and Sen. Patricia Jehlen.
Accompanying the pay equity bill in the poll will be a pregnant workers fairness bill, a bill on workplace bullying, legislation outlawing discrimination based on height and weight, and a bill limiting indemnity and insurance responsibilities for general contractors and subcontractors in construction work, Magnotto-Cleary told the News Service.
Word of some movement on the pay equity bill came up at an African American Women Equal Pay Day event in the State House where lawmakers and others called for action to be taken to reduce the income disparity between black women and white men.
Frustrated at the lack of action on that front, a Boston activist raised the notion of a potential monthly one-day strike to protest the dynamic.
"Maybe we need to do something different," Malia Lazu, executive director of Future Boston Alliance told the News Service after raising the idea at the equal pay day event.
"I love that idea," said Rep. Russell Holmes, a Mattapan Democrat.
Lazu said a potential "women's workers strike" would show the value of the work done by women and help women "claim our power." She said the idea is "not far along at all," but "if it gets some traction I'm down to organize it."
The legislation would allow employees to share pay information without repercussions on their employment, and outlaws the practice of employers seeking a prospective employee's prior wages while requiring job postings to include minimum salaries for the positions.
Its consideration comes on the heels of popular new laws that have required employers to offer earned sick time and raised the minimum hourly wage by $3 over three years.
Rep. Gloria Fox said lawmakers would have to take action on the pay equity bill before the August recess. "I'm afraid that unless we work a miracle ... it ain't going to get done," Fox said.
Fox, a 30-year lawmaker and the only African-American woman in the House, spoke passionately about the male-dominated culture she encountered when she first arrived in the State House, which she said continues today.
"The men's room they left the door open just to remind you it was their House," said Fox, recalling that women had to fight for their own bathroom on the same floor as the House chamber. She said, "Some of those guys are still here, you know what I mean ... That legacy is still living on in this very place."
The vice chairwoman of the Committee on Elderly Affairs, one of the less-powerful committees, and a member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, Fox noted that House lawmakers' stipend pay is determined by their placement on the leadership chart and said her Boston constituents sent her to Beacon Hill to "bring home the bacon."
"I do it very well as quiet as it's kept," Fox said.
Christina Kelleher, research director at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston, said when she was an aide in the Senate she believes she "faced some wage inequalities" there.
"Under the golden dome, I think that there's a lot to consider and a lot to think about and change in terms of how this building operates," Kelleher said.
Kelleher said black women tend to work in health care support occupations and in the service industry and she said the 67 percent labor force participation rate for black women in Massachusetts is higher than the 59 percent participation rate for black women nationwide. At the same time, black women had an unemployment rate of 10.5 percent, Kelleher said, and according to the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau black women earned on average 33 percent less than white men in 2013.
Kelleher said there is "more going on here" than a reflection of women working in lower-paying jobs with fewer hours.
"We are perpetuating a farce to say that education is the equalizer and to say that we live in a meritocracy," Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley told the News Service outside the meeting. She said "of course" there is pay disparity within Boston's city government and said, "We have to confront it and commit to do something about it, and if we don't we are being complicit. We are being complicit in our silence and in our inaction."
Describing her ethnicity as "black, Puerto Rican, Italian," Lazu harkened to America's history of enslaving Africans and people of color to make her point that more progress is needed on pay equity.
"I mean, c'mon. We've gone from zero pay, so I guess we should be happy that we're getting 62 cents and no longer have to nurse our slave-master's children, right?" Lazu said. "So maybe we should be happy with that. No. No."
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