Opinion: Finally companies have to be upfront about job pay ranges

Editor’s Note: Rosabeth Moss Kanter (@RosabethKanter) is the Arbuckle professor at Harvard Business School, founding chair and former director of Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative and author of the book, “Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can Change the World One Smart Innovation at a Time.” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN
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In New York City, pay is now on the record. A new law requires employers of four or more people to provide “good faith” pay range minimums and maximums for all advertised jobs there. And a similar California law will take effect in January for companies with 15 or more employees. This is about more than job postings; it is another step toward ending salary and wage inequities.

Of course, it is not yet clear what immediate impact these laws will have on pay gaps. Some commentators tout the benefits to job seekers who will waste less time chasing jobs that turn out to pay too little, but observers also note that this doesn’t directly address existing pay inequities within companies.

Others worry about the ways that companies will game the system and set ranges so wide that they have room for unequal treatment. But as the transparency trend grows, there’s no doubt the laws will bring much-needed attention to wage inequities, an issue that has gone on for far too long. And the loudest reverberations could be right inside the workplace.

Efforts to close gender and race pay gaps have been underway since the civil rights era but momentum has picked up more recently. In 2009, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act , named after the once-quiet worker who learned that she was paid less than men doing the same job and sued her employer at the time, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., over it.

Negotiation researchers have blamed the gender pay gap on the idea, demonstrated in some studies, that “women don’t ask.” But others, including advocacy organizations, point out that it’s hard for those who might face discrimination to negotiate pay if they don’t have information, so they push for more disclosure about who gets what. Publishing data on salaries by gender and race is increasingly common,…