Bill to promote equal pay moves ahead, but business groups voice concerns
Photo / Amy Waterman
Curtis Picard, president and CEO of the Retail Association of Maine, representing 3,500 members and 85,000 employees, voiced opposition to a bill that would prevent employers from inquiring about a job candidate's compensastion history. In written testimony submitted for a legislative public hearing, Picard said LD 278 and a related one, LD 122, would “impact small businesses, who do not have HR departments, the most.”
Legislation sponsored by state Sen. Cathy Breen, D-Falmouth, to promote pay equality in Maine received approval from the Legislature’s Committee on Labor and Housing on Monday.
LD 278, “An Act Regarding Pay Equality,” now heads to the full Maine House and Senate for votes.
“My bill aims to promote fairness, plain and simple,” Breen said in a news release. “We need to pass legislation that makes sure discriminatory pay practices don’t haunt people through their entire careers. Diminished wages increase the risk of poverty and decrease a person’s ability to pay off student debt and save for retirement.”
LD 278 would change labor statutes and amend the Maine Human Rights Act to prevent employers from inquiring about a job candidate’s compensation history.
Supporters of the legislation say that often one act of pay discrimination can follow a worker through their entire career because employers base compensation on previous, unfair salary rates.
According to the Maine Economic Growth Council, Maine women earn, on average, only 82 cents for every dollar earned by Maine men. Maine people with disabilities experience an even larger gap, earning about 65 cents for every dollar earned by workers without disabilities, according to the American Institutes for Research.
“Reliance on salary history in hiring practices allows for past discrimination based on gender and other factors to follow workers from job to job,” said Whitney Parrish of the Maine Women’s Lobby. “A rapidly increasing number of states and localities are prohibiting employers from seeking salary histories, and businesses are finding the practice neither necessary nor beneficial.”
In testimony supporting the bill, Adam Goode of the Maine AFL-CIO stated: “The common practice of requiring a job applicant to disclose their prior salary is one practice that can be changed in order to make some progress. LD 278 helps working people prevent employers from discriminating through unequal wages on the basis of gender, race or disability when workers who have similar skills and responsibilities are in comparable roles.”
Opposition: Bill would encourage litigation
Peter M. Gore, executive vice president of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, testified in opposition to the bill at a Feb. 6 hearing, and a related one, LD 122, that would prohibit prospective employers from asking applicants about their compensation history until after a job offer is made.
Gore stated in written testimony that should Breen’s bill become law, it will “encourage litigation, and thus additional costs for employers both large and small that may become inadvertently caught up by it.”
“Employers are already prohibited by the National Labor Relations Board from preventing employees from discussing wages,” Gore wrote. “This bill does nothing to add to employee protection in that regard, but it sets a bad precedent about dictating what is ‘evidence’ of discriminatory intent. Should this bill become law, it would elevate the significance of this particular piece of information above any other facts to support a claim of pay discrimination.”
Greg Dugal, representing Hospitality Maine, also voiced opposition to LD 278 and LD 122.
“We understand that this is a serious issue,” he wrote. “We, at Hospitality Maine, do not believe, however, that it rises to the level of scrutiny of the Maine Human Rights Commission as a protected class. There will be many small business owners — most of Maine’s businesses and certainly our members — without the benefit of access to human resource professionals to counsel them. They may make this error unintentionally, but because of that, they will be held to the scrutiny of the Commission and not simply Department of Labor inspectors … This could also come along with the specter of potential litigation and then sizable legal costs.”
Curtis Picard, president and CEO of the Retail Association of Maine, representing 3,500 members and 85,000 employees, voiced opposition to both bills, agreeing with Dugal that they would “impact small businesses, who do not have HR departments, the most.”
“Asking an applicant’s salary history or expectation is a normal part of the hiring process for many employers,” Picard wrote. “We can think of certain occupations, like a commissioned salesperson, where the information is particularly relevant … In a recent hiring process at our workplace, we do not ask someone’s salary history, but we do generally ask for someone’s salary expectations. That conversation can sometimes lead to a discussion about the applicant’s salary history.”
Maine Human Rights Commision: Neither for nor against
Amy M. Sneirson, executive director of the Maine Human Rights Commission, testified “neither for nor against” LD 278 at the Feb. 6 hearing. She acknowledged that despite laws such as the federal 1963 Equal Pay Act, which Maine adopted a version of into its labor laws, “pay inequality persists as a very real issue.”
Between 2008-16, the Maine Human Rights Commission received 139 complaints alleging sex discrimination in relation to wages, she said.
“One way in which pay inequality for similar work has continued to occur is when salary for a new jobs is based on an applicant’s prior pay,” she wrote. “Many companies base an offer of compensation on the applicant’s last compensation; if the prior pay is not equitable, the inequality in pay merely continues into the new job even when their work is the same going forward.”
Sneirson concluded that if lawmakers approve LD 278 and it becomes law, it should be accompanied by “published guidance” to ensure that all employers, particularly small businesses, are not caught unaware of the changes in relation to their hiring practices.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments