What's happening
This bill prohibits New York employers from seeking salary history from job applicants and requires a public awareness campaign on the new law.
Why it matters
Aims to reduce gender and racial wage gaps by stopping the cycle of pay discrimination. By banning employers from asking about previous salary, the bill targets a key factor that perpetuates lower pay for women and minorities, helping break the link between past discrimination and future earnings.
Empowers job applicants to negotiate pay based on skills and job requirements, not history. Applicants can focus on the value they bring to a new role rather than being anchored to previous, potentially unfair, compensation—potentially leading to higher and more equitable starting salaries.
Increases employer accountability and awareness. The required public awareness campaign ensures businesses are informed about the new law, reducing the risk of noncompliance and encouraging broader cultural change in hiring practices across New York.
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Who cares
Employers and hiring staff
The bill would make seeking a prospective employee’s salary history for an interview or as a condition of employment an unlawful discriminatory practice.
Job applicants, especially women facing pay disparities
The bill would bar salary-history requests in hiring, aiming to prevent past pay inequities from carrying into new jobs.
Labor organizations, employment agencies and licensing agencies
The prohibition would also apply to these organizations and their employees and agents.
New York State Department of Labor and Division of Human Rights
The agencies would have to establish a public awareness campaign on their websites informing employers about the prohibition.
Headline styles
Ban Salary History Questions
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
History
- Recommit, enacting clause stricken
- Referred to investigations and government operations
Full text
2 pagesUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
51
2019-2020 Regular Sessions
IN SENATE (Prefiled)
January 9, 2019
Introduced by Sens. HOYLMAN, BROOKS, COMRIE, KAMINSKY, KENNEDY, KRUEGER, RIVERA, SANDERS -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed to be committed to the Committee on Investigations and Government Operations
AN ACT to amend the executive law, in relation to prohibiting employers from seeking salary history from prospective employees
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Legislative intent. The legislature hereby finds that New York should lead the nation in preventing wage discrimination.
The wage gap between men and women is one of the oldest and most persistent effects of inequality between the sexes in the United States.
The 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the United States established the legal right to equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity. Yet half a century later, women are still subjected to wage gaps and paid less then men.
The concept of comparable worth attacks the problem of gender-based wage discrimination by mandating that jobs characterized by similar levels of education, skill, effort, responsibilities, and working conditions be compensated at similar wage levels regardless of the gender of the worker holding the job.
The goal of pay equity is to raise the wages for undervalued jobs held predominantly by women. Today, women make only 77 cents per every dollar earned by a man for a comparable job, a gender wage gap of 23 percent.
This translates into thousands of dollars of lost wages each year for each female worker, money that helps them feed their families, save for a college education and afford decent and safe housing.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD03224-01-9
S. 51 2
Pay disparities affect women of all ages, races, and education levels, but are more pronounced for women of color. Minority women make as little as 54 cents per dollar for a comparable job held by a man.
Female-dominated jobs pay twenty to thirty percent less than male-dominated jobs classified as comparable in worth and more than one half of all women work in jobs that are over seventy percent female.
Women are more likely to enter poverty in old age for several reasons: A lifetime of lower wages means women have less income to save for retirement, and less income that counts in their Social Security or pension benefit formula.
The current life expectancy for women means they will, on an average of three years, outlive men. Yet they will have to stretch their retirement savings, which are less to begin with, over a longer period of time.
The existence of pay inequity is a manifestation of deep-seated sex discrimination that prevents both equality of pay for women and equality of opportunity for both sexes.
More women in the United States are obtaining college degrees and increasing their participation in the labor force and family-friendly legislation, including the Equal Pay Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and policies such as flex time and telecommuting, have increased options to create a win-win situation for women and their employers.
Despite the progress, women continue to suffer the consequences of inequitable pay differentials: in 2010, the average college-educated woman working full-time earned $47,000 a year compared to $64,000 for a college-educated man.
During 2012, median weekly earnings for female full-time workers were $691, compared with $854 per week for men, a gender wage gap of 19 percent.
Fair pay strengthens the security of families and eases future retirement costs while also strengthening the American economy. In order to achieve fair pay, policymakers must enact laws that prevent gender based wage discrimination from when women enter the labor force.
In order to do so, it is necessary to prevent employers to base a woman's pay based on her previous pay history. Because the pay is already based on gender discrimination, allowing pay history to be requested by employers is equivalent to maintaining a standard of lower pay for women performing similar jobs as men. This practice of asking for pay history must be outlawed.
§ 2. Section 296 of the executive law is amended by adding a new subdivision 20 to read as follows:
20. It shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice of any employer, labor organization, employment agency or licensing agency, or employees or agents thereof, to seek a salary history from a prospective employee for an interview or as a condition for employment.
§ 3. The department of labor, in conjunction with the New York state division of human rights, shall establish a public awareness campaign, available on their respective websites, informing employers in the state that it is illegal to seek salary information from prospective employees.
§ 4. This act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall have become a law.
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the executive law, in relation to prohibiting employers from seeking salary history from prospective employees
Purpose or general idea of bill
In order to achieve fair pay, policymakers must enact laws that prevent gender based wage discrimination from the point when women enter the labor force. Asking prospective employees for wage history as a require- ment for a job interview or job application or as condition for accept- ing a job is a discriminatory practice that must be banned.
Summary of specific provisions
Section 1 - Legislative Intent
Section 2 - Section 295 of the executive law is amended by adding a new subdivision 19-a to read as follows: It shall be unlawful discriminatory practice of any employer, labor organization, employment agency or licensing agency, or employees or agents thereof, to seek a salary history from a prospective employee for an interview or as a condition for employment.
Justification
The 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act established the legal right to equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity in the United States. Yet, half a century later women and minorities are still paid less than their colleagues in comparable positions.
Employers who request salary histories from prospective employees often use these histories as the basis for justifying their offer of compen- sation. This practice disadvantages women and minorities who tend to have had lower salaries as the result of historical and structural inequalities. Not only does this result in disparate pay between employ- ees at the same organizations and companies, but it serves to perpetuate broader socio-economic inequalities.
Prohibiting the practice of salary histories is a necessary step in enforcing equal pay laws like those passed by the federal government over 50 years ago. While the pay gap has narrowed since then, research has also shown that it has persisted. On average, women today make 79 percent of what men in the United States earn. For African American and Hispanic or Latina women this gap is even more significant, at 63 and 54 percent respectively of earnings by white (non-Hispanic) men.
At the current rate of change in compensation, women will not see pay parity with men until 2059. The use of salary histories contributes to the persistence of.this gap and should be prohibited so that the playing field can be made more level for all those seeking employmei .
Prior legislative history
S.6342 of 2016 (Hoylman): Died in Investigations & Government Operations A.5982 of 2015-2016 (Crespo): Died in Governmental Operations
Fiscal implications
None
Effective date
This act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall have become a law.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.