Proposed equity bill would change how Massachusetts companies report pay

BOSTON —

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh urged his former colleagues in the Legislature to keep the pressure on employers to close the gender and racial pay equity gaps that persist in the workplace by holding companies to new standards of transparency.

The mayor came to Beacon Hill to lend his voice to the push for a bill filed by Rep. Elizabeth Malia that would require companies with 100 or more employees to report to the state race and gender ratios of their employees in senior positions.

Walsh called the legislation a worthy successor to the 2016 pay equity law that banned discrimination on the basis of gender in the payment of wages for comparable work. He said women must still work an extra three months, on average, to earn what a man does, and the situation is worse for black and Latina women.

“We don’t want to have to recognize any more equal pay days, because we don’t accept that women must work more to get equal pay,” Walsh said.