Massachusetts Legislature Passes An Act to Establish Pay Equity

On July 23, Massachusetts lawmakers unanimously approved An Act to Establish Pay Equity (the “Bill”), which seeks to ensure that men and women are paid equally for comparable work. Variations in pay must be based on legitimate reasons, as enumerated in the Bill. If Governor Baker signs the Bill into law, which he is expected to do, it will be effective in 2018, on either January or July 1.

Importantly under the Bill, an employer that has both completed a good faith, self-evaluation of its pay practices and can demonstrate that reasonable progress has been made towards eliminating compensation differentials based on gender for comparable work in accordance with that evaluation shall have an affirmative defense against claims. The self-evaluation, which shall not be admissible in any proceeding as evidence of a violation that occurred prior to the date the self-evaluation was completed or within six months thereafter, may be of the employer’s own design.

We will be working with clients on how to develop a “best practices” self-evaluation. This is new and uncharted waters for Massachusetts employers, and how best to design and implement a self-evaluation needs to be carefully considered and effectively implemented. As there is substantial time for this to occur, we do not recommend that employers rush to do the self-evaluation, but instead to take the time first to develop   “plan of action” of how best to evaluate current pay structures generally and how those structures are applied to employees, and then to determine what is the best form and scope of a self-evaluation. We also recommend that this be done with legal counsel, not only in order to get appropriate legal advice and counsel, but also to be able to do so in a manner that is subject to the attorney-client privilege.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be developing our own suggested best practices and working with clients as they proceed down this path.
In the meantime, we invite our clients to call any of our attorneys with any questions about this new law.