California’s Gender Pay Gap Transparency Act has been returned to an approbations committee after the California Senate amended the bill to require employers with more than 500 employees to submit pay gap statistics to the secretary of state and publish them on a public website.
The General Assembly previously passed the bill for companies with 250 employees or more. The senate version of AB 1209 would also eliminate the mandate that employers publish the information on their own websites.
In either form, nonpartisan grassroots watchdog group California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse members stands opposed.
“We’re in opposition,” Central California regional director Julie Griffiths told the Northern California Record. “We think it would increase litigation and use the court system for something that should be governmentally regulated.”
Set to go into effect on July 1, 2020, the measure would also require covered employers to make public the difference between the mean salary and median salary of male exempt employees and female exempt employees, including male board members and female board members on an annual basis.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission already requires private employers of at least 100 staffers to provide such statistical data through the submission of what’s known as an EEO-1 report.
In the case of the state, Griffiths sees the movement as just another attempt by local lawmakers to pass their responsibility on to someone else.
“There just isn’t room in the state budget to cover any of this and rather than deal with that issue they take this route and put the cost somewhere else,” she said. “That’s all having this matter enforced through the court system does. We will be reaching out to our members to make sure they are aware of that.”
The bill is sponsored by California legislators Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), Susan Eggman (D-Stockton), Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), Jimmy Gomez (D-Riverside), Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley), Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond) and Shirley Weber (D-San Diego).