{"id":39580,"date":"2022-07-08T15:24:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T21:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/three-fined-for-violating-states-new-wage-transparency-law\/"},"modified":"2022-07-08T21:24:07","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T21:24:07","slug":"three-fined-for-violating-states-new-wage-transparency-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/three-fined-for-violating-states-new-wage-transparency-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Three fined for violating state\u2019s new wage transparency law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michelle
Michelle Jones, founder and president of BPT Staffing, assists workers of color looking for jobs in the tech\/It industry. (Kathryn Scott\/Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

As it grew last year, no one at Monigle Associates was paying close attention to emails from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The letters started last July. This notice came in December:<\/p>\n

NOTICE OF FINE FOR NON-COMPLIANCE WITH DIVISION ORDERS AND ORDER TO RESPOND<\/p>\n

The Denver branding firm was out of compliance with a new state law requiring job listings to include salaries. Some listings shared no wages. Others didn\u2019t have the top amount, only a + sign, as in \u201cSalary Range: $70,000 \u2013 95,000+.\u201d And some openings offered \u201cfull benefits\u201d but no description as to what those benefits were. All were violations.<\/p>\n

Monigle paid the $8,000 fine and unwittingly became the first company to do so as part of the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2021, was intended to help close the gender pay gap where women earn less than men for the same job.<\/p>\n

In the past year, the labor department has warned hundreds of employers that wages must be displayed in the job listing and Coloradans must not be excluded from remote work opportunities. But other less-publicized elements of the law created confusion or extra work for companies. The majority complied after a warning. Three, including Monigle, were fined.<\/p>\n

Chalk Monigle\u2019s fine up to a hiring frenzy, a new applicant tracking system and, like many small businesses, a small HR team that made it challenging to keep track of the intricacies of new employment laws, said Nichole Albertsmeier, the company\u2019s chief financial and administrative officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very much aligned with the spirit of the act and the transparency. It directly aligns with our desire to continue to foster an equitable working environment,\u201d Albertsmeier said. \u201cIt was just literally we had 67 internal jobs open. And we hired 61 people in (2021). And we have a staff of 1 \u00bd people in (human resources).\u201d<\/p>\n

Equal wage violations<\/div>\n

There\u2019s a form online to report wage transparency violators. The state labor department also hired a temp worker last year to investigate complaints against companies that had purposely excluded Colorado applicants. He\u2019s still employed there, the labor department said. While the agency was more lenient last year as the law went into effect, the state has notified more than 200 companies about violations and is now issuing fines.<\/p>\n

By numbers, those include:<\/p>\n

129: Compliance assistance letters for remote jobs<\/p>\n

122: Opportunity to Cure letters giving employers an opportunity to cure ostensible violations, sent in response to a complaint of any violation type (not limited to remote jobs)<\/p>\n

3: Employers fined<\/p>\n

Monigle, $8,000 (paid).SpotOn Transact LLC, $34,500 (not yet due).Advanced Circuits Inc., $2,000 (waived after coming into compliance).<\/div>\n

Aaron Batilo, the Commerce City engineer who set up ColoradoExcluded.com to crowdsource violations, said he received 600 to 700 job listings across 200 companies, but there\u2019s not much activity anymore.<\/p>\n

While the state labor department says most companies comply after learning of a violation, the Equal Pay law is still creating confusion for employers statewide.<\/p>\n

Sherman & Howard, one of Denver\u2019s oldest law firms, has seen inquiries taper off, but \u201cwe\u2019re still getting calls on a daily basis,\u201d said Beth Ann Lennon, an attorney who advises multiple international and national employers on all aspects of labor issues.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not always questions about Colorado\u2019s law, but similar legislation in other states.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the way that Colorado drafted the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, they were on the forefront as it related to what is called the transparency part of the law, the posting requirements,\u201d Lennon said. \u201cLots of states are following suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other states, such as California, had equal-pay laws, but Colorado\u2019s is considered the most aggressive because of the requirement to post salaries publicly, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Other states left it up to job applicants to request salaries so the information was not widely known. But even California is now working on revamping its law.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado\u2019s law really kicked off a conversation among employers,\u201d said Andrea Johnson, director of state policy and work initiatives at the National Women\u2019s Law Center. \u201cAnd a few years later, now we have a different labor market, a tighter labor market where employers are starting to provide value ranges voluntarily even if they aren\u2019t in a state with a law because they know it helps attract candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar wage-transparency laws have passed in eight states, including Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada and New York. Rhode Island\u2019s law goes into effect in January.<\/p>\n

But the laws add extra concerns for employers who have operations \u2013 or at least one worker \u2013 in multiple states.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost employers want to make sure that they\u2019re properly paying people and there\u2019s no pay disparity,\u201d Lennon said. \u201cA real practical problem here is that unfortunately, in my opinion, a lot of these laws weren\u2019t fully thought out or well written and there\u2019s unintended consequences. Being the employer trying to navigate how you can be in compliance with what is expected of you has been a particularly burdensome challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Colorado, there\u2019s also a rule that companies must share promotion opportunities with existing employees even if few are qualified. This level of transparency creates awkwardness for companies that, for example, wish to move a senior partner to a specific role, something that has been done for years to reward top workers. Now they must disclose the promotion to all workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of those opportunities need to be posted. You need to have the pay and benefits information in there,\u201d Lennon said. \u201cWe have a whole team of managers and executives who\u2019ve been running their companies (like this) for decades, saying, \u2018This person\u2019s been doing really great. Let\u2019s promote them and give them more responsibility\u2019 \u2026 and making that decision without ever posting it. \u2026 That is now a violation of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting to pay equity<\/div>\n

From the worker\u2019s perspective though, having extra knowledge of what a job actually will pay creates a starting point that helps workers in the long run, even if it\u2019s not an instant fix for the wage gap, said Michelle Jones, president of BPT Staffing in Centennial, which places IT workers of color.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt at least helps you determine which roles to apply for,\u201d Jones said. \u201cIt gives you a floor and I think for the most part, people are shooting in the middle, or if they feel super competent and know that we\u2019re having a tech-talent shortage, they\u2019re going to be like, it\u2019s got to be in the top range or I\u2019m not even interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies need to go beyond wage transparency if they really want to address pay equity. Jones suggests auditing their own wages. If they notice in their pay audits that a Hispanic female business analyst at one level is paid less than a male business analyst at a lower level, that should trigger an alert that something\u2019s not quite right, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to look at where the really big gaps are and ask why is that there? Because if the gap is that big they probably don\u2019t need to employ that person. Maybe they\u2019re not performing. Maybe they\u2019re not hitting the skills that they need and that\u2019s why the gap is there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost better to give that person a shot to go somewhere else to make a higher salary than to knowingly keep them on staff and pay other people 30% more for the same exact work.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Seligman, who supported the new law as executive director of toward Justice, said there\u2019s evidence that wage transparency is working in Colorado. Workers have increased bargaining power as employers are desperate to fill openings. Some of that has to do with the competition for workers as businesses reopened in the pandemic. But the state\u2019s average wage has grown faster than the rest of the nation.<\/p>\n

According to state and U.S. data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Colorado\u2019s average hourly wages grew 11.5% between January 2021 and May 2022, while U.S. wages grew 6.7%. Dollarwise, that\u2019s $34.62 an hour in Colorado as of May, compared with $31.95 in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow we know that the law is working is that there was some initial employer resistance to disclosing salary,\u201d Seligman said. \u201cThat resistance comes from a desire not to undermine women or people of color who might otherwise not take as aggressive a position when it comes to bargaining for higher pay, but rather because when you start to disclose salary, employers lose some of their competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, he added, employers already have a sense of what they\u2019re willing to pay and how much their competitors do. But they are trying to figure out how much the prospective worker will accept.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey lose the advantage of an asymmetry of information that employers often have, meaning we have a sense of what we\u2019re going to pay and what our competitors are paying but we\u2019re not going to disclose that to workers in the hopes that you can bargain down their wages or that they\u2019ll be able to sign someone up with a lowball offer,\u201d Seligman said.<\/p>\n

Women still are paid less than men even though gains have been made over the years. And not having knowledge of the true top hurts women and people of color who haven\u2019t been in the room before and prevents them from getting to pay equity in the first place, Jones said. And if pay ranges aren\u2019t honest, that doesn\u2019t truly help pay equity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a company tell me, \u2018Put $56 to $100 per hour, but if it\u2019s a really good candidate, we\u2019re willing to go up to $150.\u2019 So I said, \u2018Let\u2019s put $150 because the very first question (companies) ask is where do you want to be salarywise?\u2019 If you shoot for $70, you\u2019re never going to see that $150,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThey almost make you pick where you\u2019re going to go and you\u2019re afraid to overshoot it and lose the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson, with the National Women\u2019s Law Center, said ideally, a federal law would help employers nationwide set uniform policies for all workers instead of changing depending on the state. And that equips job seekers with information going in \u2013 instead of learning later on that a less-experienced colleague is making much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t a complicated regulatory regime or complex benefit,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s just saying to employers, you know what you\u2019ve budgeted for a position. Now be transparent about that. There are so many bottom line benefits to transparency, especially in terms of attracting candidates and retaining talent. \u2026 We know that when salary ranges are available to applicants, that helps close gender wage gaps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/div>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Colorado issues. To learn more, go to coloradosun.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less-publicized elements of the law are still causing mishaps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39580"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}