Last Women’s Breakfast of the Season Tackles NYC Salary Transparency Law

04/25/2023 in
Last Women’s Breakfast of the Season Tackles NYC Salary Transparency Law

Back in November, New York City enacted a groundbreaking piece of legislation: a salary transparency law that requires employers to include a good-faith pay salary range in all job advertisements for every job, promotion and transfer opportunity. The law has transformed the job search and salary negotiation processes, which have typically been opaque by design and contributed significantly to racial and gender pay disparities across industries. But in the months to come, salary transparency will be expanded statewide, thanks to Governor Hochul’s signing of Senate bill S9427A.

To close out this season of LM Live’s Women’s Breakfasts, on April 25 the Alliance hosted a panel to dig deeper into the salary transparency law. The discussion highlighted its successes as well as the obstacles in the fight for gender and racial pay parity. Moderated by the City’s Gwynne Hogan, the panel featured career coach Erin Andersen; Jacqueline Ebanks, executive director at the New York City Commission on Gender Equity; Beverly Neufeld, executive director of PowHer NY; and Diana Franco, vice president of initiatives at women.nyc.

The new law is applicable to employers with four or more employees and gives businesses 30 days to cure listings found out of compliance before subjecting them to a fine. Ebanks noted that the salary transparency law is not a knock against businesses, but is “a fight for transparency for workers” in the city’s effort to achieve pay and work equity.   

“This is part of a suite of laws to empower workers and make sure they have safe workplaces,” she said, noting that the new law helped workers be better informed about the types of jobs that match their skills and experience.

In the post-Covid era, Ebanks said, people are re-evaluating the workplace, and should be thinking of the relationship between employer and employee as a partnership. “I believe we’re in a global worker revolution regardless of socioeconomic status,” she said. “The salary transparency law is creating balance in the workplace.” 

Franco added that the transparency law also helped job seekers look outside their industries; people who may want to switch career paths can see how much skills earned in their prior work experience are worth in different industries and sectors. Andersen pointed out that the law could be an asset for hiring managers who were previously sifting through applicants who were not aligned with the salary requirements. And for job seekers, the law helps encourage salary negotiation, especially among women and people of color, who are less likely to negotiate when stabbing blindly at a range. “People know where they fall,” she said.

Compliance with the law has been somewhat spotty, with some employers offering astronomical salary ranges that fall outside what one might consider to be “good faith.” Neufeld acknowledged that the law’s inexact wording left room for creative interpretation, but said that businesses openly flouting salary transparency could face public scrutiny and end up struggling to fill empty roles. “Ultimately, when you’re called out for a salary range of $60,000 to $300,000, that doesn’t look good,” she said. 

In addition to inspiring a statewide law, the panelists pointed out that the city’s transparency efforts have prompted employers in other states to include salary ranges in their listings, like in California and Colorado. Still, while the panelists see the law as the first step in a significant cultural shift, workplace equity will take time to achieve. “We have to help move people into better paying jobs, but we also have to honor people who are in roles that pay less,” Neufeld said. Other factors, like childcare access, can impede the fight for equality in the workplace. 

But the panelists said they found the passage of salary transparency a significant step in the process. “I’m excited to see how this generates change, because we haven’t seen change in 20 years,” Franco said. 

You can listen to a recording of the panel discussion here.

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