State Representative Lipper-Garabedian Joins Massachusetts House in Passing Bipartisan Wage Equity Legislation

BOSTON – Wednesday, October 10, 2023 – On Wednesday, October 4, in an effort to help close the gender and racial wage gap in Massachusetts, Representative Kate Lipper Garabedian joined her colleagues in the House of Representatives passed the Frances Perkins Workplace Equity Act, a bill that requires employers with 25 or more employees to disclose a salary range when posting a position and protects an employee’s right to ask for salary ranges in the workplace.

"I was proud to join my colleagues in passing the Francis Perkins Workplace Equity Act not only to close gender and racial wage gaps but to empower workers broadly across the Commonwealth,” said State Representative Lipper-Garabedian (D-Melrose). "Greater pay transparency is a tool for correcting gender and racial wage disparities. Salary information further empowers all workers with greater leverage as they navigate the job market and seek income aligned with the value of their work."

"With this legislation, Massachusetts will be one step closer to ensuring equal pay for equal work,” said House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano (D-Quincy). “Pay transparency will not only make our workplaces more equitable, it will also make Massachusetts more competitive with other states. I’d like to thank Chairman Cutler, and all my colleagues in the House, for their important work on this legislation.”

In Greater Boston, women on average were paid 70 cents for every dollar earned by a man in 2021, according to the Boston Women’s Workforce Council. This gap widens among communities of color, where Black and Latina women have the highest gender and racial wage gaps of 51 and 55 cents, respectively.

If the bill passed today is signed into law, Massachusetts would become the eleventh state to mandate pay transparency by requiring employers to disclose salary ranges, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Named after the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor and Boston native Frances Perkins, the legislation builds on Massachusetts’ Equal Pay Act which was passed by the Legislature in 2016 to bring more fairness and equality to workplaces.

The bill also requires employers with more than 100 employees to share their federal equal employment opportunity reports with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, which would then be aggregated and published to help identify gender and racial wage gaps by industry.

This bill now heads to the Massachusetts State Senate.

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