TRENTON – Gov. Chris Christie took action today on four bills dealing with gender pay equity.
The governor signed into law A2647/S1930, which requires every employer in the state with 50 or more employees to post notification detailing the right to be free of gender inequity or bias in pay, compensation, benefits or other terms or conditions of employment under the “Law Against Discrimination.”
The bill requires the notice to be posted in an area accessible to all of the business’ employees. It also requires employers to provide a written copy of the notification to new workers within 30 days of hiring.
The bill passed the Senate 26-8 and the Assembly 51-27 with one abstention.
“Everyone in the workplace – whether the employer or employee – needs to be on notice that, as with all forms of bias, compensation discrimination due to gender is illegal and has no place in our modern workforce,” Christie said in a statement.
“Too often, women’s value and contributions in the workplace have been undermined and shortchanged merely because of their gender,” he said. “I fully endorse the Legislature’s efforts in this regard, and that is why I signed this sensible, preventative measure into law.”
However, the governor absolutely vetoed A2649/S1932. The legislation would have required public contractors to report certain employment information to the state regarding every worker employed in connection with the contract.
Contractors would be required to provide information regarding the gender, race, job title, occupational category, and total compensation of every employee of the employer employed in the state in connection with the contracts.
The bill passed the Senate 22-14 and the Assembly 45-31.
“While the purported goal of Assembly Bill No. 2649 is to increase the transparency of certain businesses that are receiving state funds and to require disclosure by companies that are working in the public arena to ensure that they are complying with the state’s workplace gender parity laws, this bill will unfortunately do nothing to tangibly improve pay disparity,” Christie said in his veto message.
“Instead, the bill will burden countless employers with onerous reporting requirements, thereby driving up the cost of public contracts, which are ultimately shouldered by the taxpayer,” he said.
Also in the gender equity package was A2648/S1935, which prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who disclose, or request, certain employment information.
Such employment information can include job title, occupational category, and rate of compensation, including benefits, of any employee or former employee, or the gender, race, ethnicity, military status, or national origin of the employee or former employee.
The rule prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who seek or make the disclosure if it’s made in a reasonable belief that the purpose of the request or disclosure was to assist in investigating the possibility of the occurrence of potential discriminatory treatment concerning pay, according to the bill.
The bill passed the Senate 22-12 and the Assembly 49-28 with one abstention.
The governor proposed changing language in the bill he says would make it conform to federal statute and New Jersey case law.
Similarly, Christie added likeminded language to the final gender equity bill, A2650/S1933.
The governor issued a statement saying he supports it “to the extent that it conforms with the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 and New Jersey’s established case law,” but added it “departs from those state and federal standards by omitting an express limitation on the amount of back pay an employee can recover.”
The bill expands the scope of the current “Law Against Discrimination” to include that “discriminatory compensation” occurs on “each occasion that compensation is paid in furtherance of that discriminatory decision or practice,” according to the bill.
The bill essentially “restarts” the applicable statute of limitations governing discriminatory compensation and makes each paycheck another instance of the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice and therefore a new or continuing violation.
The bill passed the Senate 23-12 and the Assembly 49-26 with four abstentions.
