Comcast referred questions to the Chamber of Commerce for this story. Neither responded to requests for comment after the mayor signed the bill.
David Cohen, a senior Comcast vice president, told the newspaper on Jan. 10 the bill was stoking frustrations in the city’s business community about increased regulations coming from City Hall. He said the policy doesn’t make sense in “corporate America” and pondered how companies would know what to pay top executives without past salary knowledge.
Since the Massachusetts bill was signed, similar legislation has been picking up speed around the country, said Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C.
“For lawmakers, it is something that you can easily understand, thinking back to your first jobs and how those salaries impacted you,” she said.
Similar salary history bans have been introduced in New Jersey, and the city councils of New York City and Pittsburgh as well as the District of Columbia. In November, New York City stopped asking applicants for municipal jobs what they currently earn, and earlier this month Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order banning state entities from asking about pay history. Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress, has sponsored similar legislation in Congress.
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce ended up backing the Massachusetts legislation after lots of meetings and some tweaks to the bill, said Jim Rooney, president and CEO of the group. Employers are allowed to ask candidates what their salary expectations are, and candidates are free to reveal their past salary, as with the Philadelphia bill.
“‘What are your salary expectations?’ is a powerful question, and it lets you be within law,” he said.
Victoria Budson, executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, says many steps are needed in order to close the wage gap, including educating employees and employers and understanding what a job is worth in a particular labor market.
“This provision won’t close the wage gap, but it’s an important piece in helping close it,” she said. “You’re not allowed to ask someone’s marital status or if they are planning to have children. We have a long standing history of things not to ask an employee. This would just be one thing added to that.”
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