Laws banning employers from asking for salary history during job interviews are beginning to grow in popularity.
Philadelphia council passed legislation making the practice illegal on grounds that it perpetuates pay discrimination, Philly.com reported.
Philadelphia’s mayor has said, through a spokesman, that he will sign the bill into law, making it the first such city law in the nation.
“Base the salary offer on the job, what the job is worth and what the applicant brings in experience and ability,” Councilman Bill Greenlee told Philly.com. Greenlee sponsored the ban.
The argument is that women and minorities are given lower salaries at their first jobs, and then forced to carry that inequity throughout their careers. The new ban would force employers to set salaries based on the job at hand, rather than the employee’s current income.
Similar bills has been introduced in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey state legislatures, and have already been enacted in Massachusetts.
New York City employers won’t be able to ask for your salary history anymore
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, signed a bill on Thursday that makes it unlawful for those involved in the hiring process to inquire about what an applicant currently makes — a measure that takes aim at the gender pay gap.
“This is about fixing a broken history. This is about overcoming years and years of discrimination that held people back,” de Blasio said at the signing ceremony.
The law will go into effect in October. In the meantime, businesses that look for talent in one of the country’s largest labor markets will need to reexamine their hiring practices.
“This will require employers to change their job applications, employ new practices in terms of hiring, [and] retool how they engage in the salary discussions with prospective employees, focusing on salary expectations rather than current salary,” said Kathleen McLeod Caminiti, a New York attorney with Fisher Phillips who represents employers.
More than 20 states, from California to Georgia to Vermont, are considering similar legislation that would bar employers from asking about a job applicant’s pay history, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. New York City joins Massachusetts and Philadelphia, which already have those laws on the books.
Such bills look to address a real problem. Women earned 79.6 cents for every dollar men made in 2015, according to data released by the Census Bureau last year.
Proponents say asking an interviewee about her salary history compounds the problem.
“If you have a practice that relies mostly or completely on someone’s prior salary in setting pay, that disadvantages women who may not negotiate as much as men, and will perpetuate any disparity that already existed,” said Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality at the National Women’s Law Center.
What Would Gates Do? A Defense Chief’s Plan for North Korea
Robert Gates, the most seasoned senior U.S. national-security official of the last half-century, lays out a response
The Gates proposal proceeds from several basic principles. First: There simply is no good pure military option for attacking North Korea. The sheer destruction and danger of an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula take that idea off the table.Second: “China is still the key no matter how you slice it,” Mr. Gates says. As has been noted by every recent American administration, China is the one country with sufficient leverage over North Korea to make a difference... “It seems to me the need is for a comprehensive strategy you would lay out to the Chinese at a very high level, which would basically have both a diplomatic and a military component.” In other words, make a deal with China before you deal with North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, directly.
.. Under the Gates approach, the U.S. would make China the following offer: Washington is prepared to recognize the North Korean regime and forswear a policy of regime change, as it did when resolving the Cuban missile crisis with the Soviet Union; is prepared to sign a peace treaty with North Korea; and would be prepared to consider some changes in the structure of military forces in South Korea.
In return, the U.S. would demand hard limits on the North Korean nuclear and missile program, essentially freezing it in place, enforced by the international community and by China itself.
.. “I think you cannot get the North to give up their nuclear weapons,” Mr. Gates says. “Kim sees them as vital to survival. But you may be able to get them to keep the delivery systems to very short range.”
.. the North Koreans would have to agree to invasive inspections that could insure a limited nuclear stockpile of no more than a dozen or two dozen nuclear weapons, as well as inspections to ensure they aren’t developing more weapons or further capabilities for delivery.
.. On the flip side of that offer, Mr. Gates says, the U.S. would present a tougher alternative for China: “If that is not an outcome you can accept, we are going to take steps in Asia you hate.”
.. Absent such an agreement, the U.S. would “heavily populate Asia with missile defenses.” That would include missile-defense buildups in South Korea, Japan and aboard additional American ships stationed in the Pacific. In addition, the U.S. would declare that it would shoot down “anything we think looks like a launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile” from North Korea.
Trump Breaks a Promise to his Voters on Immigration
The administration’s decision not to reverse the DACA policy is an announcement that the president played his voters for fools.
.. The New York Times reports today that Trump will extend indefinitely the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that confers residency and work rights on 800,000 people who illegally entered the United States as minors.
.. During the campaign, Trump had repeatedly promised to end the protected status of this group, the so-called Dreamers. In office, however, he had postponed a decision about their status. In the first three quarter of 2017, the Trump administration allowed the program to continue to operate. It issued some 17,000 new “Dreamer” visas and renewed more than 107,000 others as they came due.
.. This looked like the beginning of a legislative strategy on immigration reform: preserve DACA as a potential concession to be offered in a trade for other things
.. But to get something, you always have to give something. The Deferred Action program was the give. And Trump just gave it away for free.
.. The Trump administration is stepping up the tempo of arrests and raids. But without a stronger legislative basis for enforcement—including above all meaningful penalties for employers of illegal labor—that tempo will last only as long as Trump’s first cabinet
.. if Democrats take either house of Congress (or both) in 2018, they can cut or eliminate the funding for such enforcement.
.. The wall isn’t being built, won’t be built, and was anyway never anything more than an expensive symbol.
.. Exactly why Trump betrayed his most ardent supporters will be a study for reporters and psychologists. Was it the influence of his daughter and son-in-law? The advice of his pollsters and political strategists? Or was there no plan at all, just a consequence of his administration’s utter ineffectuality at passing anything through Congress—and the president’s own overwhelming concentration on his business interests and legal troubles?