California’s state budget is tanking – fewer revenues due to reduced income and sales taxes and greater expenditures due to unemployment pay-outs and other costs to deal with COVID-19.
To address the shortfall, union leaders are in final-stage negotiations with the Administration and State Legislature to determine if state worker salaries might be reduced – through pay cuts or furloughs.
Ironically, that puts union leaders – and especially SEIU 1000 President Yvonne Walker, due to the size and diversity of her membership – in a strategic position to make sure state worker pay equity is front and center when the state’s finances rebound.
The way to do this is to cue up research that offers a more precise picture of where gender pay gaps exist.
I recently reviewed (with valuable input from colleagues) research on “women’s earnings” from the California Department of Human Resources (CalHR). The report released this year – analyzing 2016 data – was a considerable step up from previous publications.
Let me get nerdy here, for just a paragraph, as CalHR deserves recognition for taking their report to the next level:
- The categories or occupational groups used by the state were matched to the categories used by the federal government, allowing for better comparisons;
- Median salaries were presented for women by race/ethnicity; and,
- Detailed analyses were provided for most of the occupational categories and many of sub-categories within each occupational group.
All this work was not a minor undertaking.
But more can be done.
Should Ms. Walker’s members agree to pay cuts or furloughs, here’s hoping she’ll negotiate in return a promise of:
1) more probing research on state worker pay equity;
2) a research process opened up to input from stakeholders;
3) the appointment of a pay equity czar (or champion) accountable directly to the Governor; and
3) a commitment to consider the gender gap findings in future negotiations with all bargaining units.
Some additional proposals to consider:
1) Establish a public advisory group. The state’s research on pay equity gets conducted behind closed doors. No outside group that I know of reviews the research design, questions or findings. A group of pay equity experts should be brought in to offer suggestions.
2) Play catch-up. The next state worker report on women’s earnings should combine data from the past several years, which means a report released in 2021 would include data for 2017-2019 or 2020.
3) Insist on intersectionality. The CalHR report found that the pay gap for Black, Latino and Native American women was greater than that for White and Asian women. In future reports, this “intersectional analysis” should be extended to male workers, and analyses by gender and race/ethnicity should also be presented for all occupational categories and sub-categories.
4) Measure overall compensation, not just wages. Different bargaining units have secured vastly different benefit packages. Information on retirement rates and dates, health and family leave benefits, social security contributions, disability benefits and more is publicly available, and needs to augment the research on women’s earnings.
No doubt, some unions will object to making this data more public, because, as I wrote in the Sacramento Bee, male-dominated public safety unions have had great success in negotiating rich benefit packages.
5) Evaluate past recommendations. For years, the CalHR reports have recommended greater outreach and training, especially for departments where there are few women. Given that California’s gender pay gap is decreasing at a glacial pace, we need to know the track record of these departments: Have they earnestly conducted outreach to women and reformed organizational culture to be welcoming?
Inquiring minds . . . .
6) Assess trends. Baby Boomers are retiring! That’s not exactly a news flash, but given the great strides women made entering the workforce in the 70s and 80s, it’s reasonable to wonder how the exit of female Boomers might affect the gender pay gap.
Consider this depressing scenario: The pay gap gets worse because retiring female Boomers, at the height of their wage-earning capacity, are replaced by fewer women, many who earn far less.
7) Conduct a comparable worth analysis. Comparing women’s earnings to men’s provides useful information, but the state has never fulfilled the requirements set forth in comparable worth legislation, passed in 1981, to determine the extent to which women’s work is under-valued and under-compensated.
I raised the following questions in a recent CalMatters op-ed calling for a pay equity czar: “Are differences, for example, in compensation between a California Highway Patrol cadet and a registered dietician due to a fair assessment of required skills, education and work activities? Or perhaps to the unequal power of their respective unions?” Experts in the State of Minnesota should be consulted about their process and methodology.
We have to be realistic: California’s budget crisis makes it unlikely that the state will have the financial resources needed to address gender pay gaps in the short-term.
But there is an opportunity emerging from this COVID-19 crisis: Union leaders can ask for research to be launched that in two years’ time will help them negotiate for pay equity.
