Pay equity effort for city workers gets Council's green light

The City Council has passed a series of bills designed to close racial and gender wage gaps within the municipal workforce.

The bills expand upon a 2018 law that mandates the city to publish municipal employee pay data annually and will require city agencies to assess their recruitment efforts to promote diversity within the workforce.

A report published last September using salary data obtained by the Council found that the median annual salary for female city employees was $22,874 less than that of male city workers, while white city staffers earned on average $24,965 more than black employees.

Much of these wage gaps were driven by occupational segregation, with black, Latino, Asian and female employees typically over-represented in low-paying jobs, according to the Council. The bills seek to address occupational segregation by requiring the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to report annually on civil-service exam outcomes, including passage rates, and participation in training programs related to civil-service promotions.

The legislation also mandates that city agencies report their recruitment efforts to DCAS and requires the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to train city agencies to create hiring materials that encourage diverse recruitment.

In a Feb. 2 statement following the vote, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams noted that “the civil service can be a gateway to economic mobility and the middle class in our city.”

“However, for civil service opportunities to meet this potential, we must eliminate pay disparities based on gender, race, or ethnicity. Our pay equity package will provide key data and analysis on inequity in our municipal workforce and enact practices that help promote workforce diversity and pay equity,” she said.

City must provide more data

The bills also aim to close gaps in existing law to permit the Council to obtain more complete data. For instance, the legislation will give the Council access to DOE staffers pay data, which it did not have for its previous report. It also will remove a 90-day time limit for the Council to access data related to municipal workers’ salary information.

“That has limited the type of analysis we’ve been able to do crucial work with,” Council Member Farah Louis said ahead of the vote. “We have been having the conversation around pay equity for many, many years. Talking about it is not solving the problem. We need action [and] we need action on what the data tells us.”

Local Law 18 was spurred by a 2013 lawsuit by Communications Workers of America Local 1180 charging that the city had discriminated against the women and people of color who made up a majority of Administrative Managers. In 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found reasonable cause to believe that the city had discriminated against workers in that title for decades. The city and union reached a $15-million settlement in 2019.

Although the Council’s report found that a small pay disparity exists — 1.4 percent for black women and 1.3 percent for Latinas — between women of color and white male employees holding the same civil-service title, there were also much wider gaps among some titles. For example, male educational management associates earned $48,996 higher than their female counterparts, representing the highest gender pay gap among civil-service jobs.

For years, unions representing the city’s emergency medical technicians and paramedics have sought to close the wage gap between EMS and firefighters. Last December, District Council 37’s Local 2507 and FDNY EMS Superior Officers Association filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 25 members alleging pay discrimination.

While 55 percent of EMS staffers are people of color and 24 percent are women, 70 percent of firefighters are white men and less than 1 percent are women. EMTs earn $59,534 annually after five years on the job, while firefighters make $85,292, according to the suit.

In an email to The Chief, Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507, said that “we are thankful for the work of the City Council to help address the serious problem with pay disparity in the municipal workforce.”

“Unfortunately, despite the Council’s continued efforts to improve transparency with increased reporting obligations, the City refuses to take the necessary steps to end these practices. This is why our union was forced to take legal action to protect our members from these discriminatory practices,” he stated.

clewis@thechiefleader.com