By John Whittaker

jwhittaker@post-journal.com

Companies bidding on state contracts will have to disclose data on employee compensation by gender, race, ethnicity, and other relevant data starting Jan. 1.

The legislation, A. 7169, had been proposed in the previous two legislative sessions by Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, D-Greenwich Village, but hadn’t made it out of committee until this year.

In her legislative justification, Glick wrote that requiring prospective state contractors to disclose whether wage gaps exist in their organizations will create transparency and accountability in the state contracting process by allowing New Yorkers to see if their tax dollars are going to companies with disparities in employee pay by gender, race, or ethnicity. Such disclosures would also create an incentive for contractors who would like to do business with New York state to take action internally to address the unconscious or conscious biases that may result in a wage gap. Similar action was taken for federal contracts in 2014.

State Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, asked several questions of Glick on the Assembly floor before members voted on the proposal. Goodell started by asking if the job classifications to be disclosed would follow a typically used federal form with roughly 12,000 job categories. Glick said that list, or one like it, would most likely be used.

The Jamestown Republican then questioned whether the breakdown would include anything other than pay and job classification, such as seniority, education or experience that could cause someone to earn more or less than a fellow employee. Glick said the legislation does not provide for such a breakdown. Goodell then asked if the pay reporting requirement is company wide or would only involve a company’s New York employees; Glick replied that would be left up to regulations to be developed by the state Comptroller’s office.

“That’s a pretty important issue because if you have a large national corporation, for example, and we require them to disclose all their wage categiories or all their employment characterizations for all their national operations in order to bid in New York, we’re not going to have some of those corporations bidding because its not cost-effective for them to collect that data,” Goodell said. “If we come back to this at some point we might want to make it specific it’s at a maximum New York employees.”

Goodell’s questions ended with a requested comparison between Glick’s legislation and Executive Order 162, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued in 2017 and which took effect on Jan. 1, 2018. The order requires state contractors to disclose data on the gender, race, ethnicity, job title and salary of employees performing work on state contracts issued and executed on or after June 1, 2017. Glick said the executive order does not require a public report be issued.

Goodell summarized his opposition to the legislation by saying it is likely the bill will increase the cost of bids to the state because companies will pass the cost of the data reports into the bid rather than doing it for free, that some companies won’t want to put that information out if they aren’t guaranteed to receive a bid and that putting the information out publicly could harm businesses who don’t want competitors to know their pay scales.

“For these reasons and others the business Council is very opposed, as is the Association of General Contractors and all of those who are in opposition strongly confirm they are in compliance and agree and wholeheartedly endorse equal pay for equal work,” Goodell said. “They also note that many of these reporting requirements, to the extent they’re relevant, are already covered under an exective order. I don’t think the bill is necessary. I think it has some really detrimental impacts on those who are seeking to compete for state contracts.”