It’s been less than a day since pay transparency has gone into effect in New York, but already eagle-eyed sleuths on Twitter are giving some of these salary ranges the side-eye.
As of November 1st, companies are required to prove “a good faith salary range for every job, promotion, and transfer opportunity advertised,” according to the city’s Commission on Human Rights.
But, according to Black folks on Twitter, some companies are really stretching the definition of “good faith.”
Victoria M. Walker, a New York-based travel reporter, noticed that the New York Post had listed a salary range anywhere from $50,000 to $145,000.
“A salary range of $50,000 to $145,000 is deeply unserious,” wrote Walker on Twitter.
Another poster, Josyana Joshua, a corporate debt reporter at Bloomberg Business, tweeted that CitiBank had listed a salary range of $0.00 to $2,00,000. As of now, the range listed for the posting is $59,340 to $149,320.00, which is still pretty broad.
The NYC Consumer and Worker Protection Department has the authority to investigate violations of the pay transparency act. So, some companies listing super-wide salary ranges may be held accountable.
As our Senior Writer, Angela Johnson points out, pay transparency is a vital part of ensuring pay equity for women and people of color:
Pay transparency is a valuable tool that could help close the racial and gender wage gap. According to Equal Pay Today, the discrepancy for Black women compared to non-Hispanic white men is 67 cents for full-time, year-round workers. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Black men earned 76 percent of what white men earned in the first quarter of 2022.
According to Seher Khawaja, senior attorney for economic empowerment at Legal Momentum, the new law makes companies accountable for ensuring their employees are paid fairly.
“It puts their feet to the fire to think about how they’re setting pay and to avoid discriminatory practices that were working their way in previously,” Khawaja said.
Thankfully, it’s only day one, so companies have plenty of time to shape up and give potential employees the tools they need to get paid what they’re worth.