Bill boosts salary transparency, tackles unfair compensation for women and people of color
*Update: On July 31, 2024, Governor Maura Healey signed this legislation into law. You can view that law here.
(BOSTON—7/24/2024) Today the Massachusetts Legislature took a powerful step towards closing the gender and racial wage gap in the Commonwealth by passing An Act relative to salary range transparency. The legislation requires employers with 25 or more employees to disclose a salary range when posting a position and protects an employee’s right to ask their employer for the salary range for their position when applying for a job or seeking a promotion.
When signed into law H.4890 would make Massachusetts the eleventh state to mandate pay transparency by requiring employers to disclose salary ranges, according to the National Women’s Law Center. H.4890 builds on the Legislature’s 2016 passage of the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, which prohibited wage discrimination based on gender and brought long-sought fairness and equality to workplaces in the state.
“I am proud of the Legislature’s work to address pay inequities in the Commonwealth with this bill,” said Senator Cindy F. Friedman (D-Arlington), Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. “The statistics speak for themselves: women, especially women of color, face significant disparities in the level of pay they receive for the same work as their white, male counterparts. Thanks to the steadfast efforts of Senate President Karen Spilka to bring the business community into the conversation, we will be able to provide the transparency and protections our workers and job seekers need to live, succeed, and grow in the Commonwealth.”
The bill requires employers with more than 100 employees to share their federal wage and workforce data reports with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD), which would then be responsible for compiling and publishing aggregated wage and workforce date to help identify gender and racial wage gaps by industry.
In Greater Boston, the 2023 gender wage gap was 21 cents, according to the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. This gap becomes more pronounced when comparing white men and women of color, where Black/African American women face a 54-cent wage gap, Hispanic/Latina women face a 52-cent wage gap, and Asian women face a 19-cent wage gap.
Having passed both chambers, the bill now goes to the Governor’s desk for her signature.
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